


two people divided by a common language

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, past dub-con relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During and after the events of S2, Stephen Hart and Lorraine Wickes teach each other to take care of themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Luka dared me to do this; you tell me if I pulled it off or not. :P Since she and Bella were also good enough to beta it, I suppose I ought not complain...

    The simplest way to describe it was as a kind of paralysis.

 

            Oh, Stephen moved. He went through the motions every day, all the things he was expected to do where other people could see them; he didn’t smile or laugh, but most people didn’t expect him to, and most people were not paying close attention, anyway, except to look sideways at someone whose life had become a twisted joke. A quick glance – and then turn away again, as if you never saw any of it. And then another quick glance, because Stephen knew himself to be a disaster, and people were never great at pretending not to stare at that sort of thing.

 

            But they didn’t really see, and that was just fine by Stephen. If nobody was looking properly, nobody would notice that he never went home. In fairness, he was pretty sure that Helen hadn’t noticed that he never went home; it had been a week now, he’d only dropped in once to pick up some clothes, and there had been signs of her presence carelessly scattered all about. She herself hadn’t been in. He hadn’t heard a word from her, and he had no idea where she was.

 

            That not knowing itched at the back of his skull. Never turn your back on a predator.

 

            Stephen turned his back, and hoped that some kind killer would claw out his throat before he saw them coming. It would be easier than the way he lived now, snatching sleep in one of the bunkrooms, pretending to work late when he had little to do, avoiding Connor’s eyes as he reheated microwave meals.

 

            He was not expecting a woman to walk down to his bunkroom well into the evening and knock on the door. He opened it nonetheless and stared down at her; not that much down. She was fairly tall for a woman, and he knew her face, but he couldn’t quite remember her name.

 

            “Can I help you,” he said, and hoped his tone didn’t make it too obvious that he didn’t want to. What was her bloody name? Laura? Lauren?

 

            “You haven’t left the building in three days,” she said, and held up one of those Bags for Life, full of… something. Boxes, it looked like, plastic boxes. “I’m not the one who needs help here. This is for you.”

 

            Stephen took the bag and stared into it. Tupperware boxes, full of food. At least a week’s. He stared at her, instead of at her gift, and she stared evenly back at him. He knew her by her cool demeanour as much as anything else – friendly, but reserved – background noise in a project full of vivid personalities. She was – admin staff, he thought. And he still couldn’t remember her name.

 

            “I don’t know what you’re hiding from,” she said. One dark eyebrow twitched. “I can hazard a guess. But you look dreadful, so I thought I’d buy you some time before you had to face it.”

 

            _What am I hiding from?_ Stephen wondered suddenly, and the answer came to him, not the obvious _Nick’s anger_ or _Helen_ , but _Helen’s plans_. 

 

            “Thank you,” he said slowly. “Er. Laurel.”

 

            “Lorraine,” she corrected, and he flushed.

 

            “Sorry. Lorraine. Er – thank you. It’s very kind.”

 

            Lorraine glanced at her shoes, which were, when Stephen looked at them, almost painfully sensible. He was caught by surprise when she looked back up at him and caught his eye, and he couldn’t look away from the iron in hers.

 

            “You seem convinced you’re helpless,” Lorraine said.

 

            “I…” Stephen floundered a bit, then settled for honesty. “I am. I mean.” What could he do, next to whatever Lester was planning, whatever Helen was planning? He was a pawn. He always had been. And he wasn’t even strong enough to kick against the future’s tides, like Nick; the water kept pulling him under.

 

            “There’s always a way out,” Lorraine said. “That doesn’t involve dying.”

 

            Stephen opened his mouth and shut it again. “I don’t know what you mean.”

 

            “Yes, you do.”

 

            “I made my choices,” Stephen said, feeling defensive, and hearing it in his voice. “I started this.”

 

            “So make some different choices now.” Lorraine stared at him as if she was willing him to understand, and he stared back.

 

            “Why are you in the office, anyway?” he said eventually, when his eyes started to water and he blinked. “It’s half-past seven.”

 

            “Oh.” Lorraine shook her head. “Just – I needed to catch up on some work. I was behind.”

 

            Stephen suddenly recalled where he’d seen her before; talking to Leek, looking stone-faced. Mind you, most people who had to talk to Leek on a regular basis looked stone-faced, except for Lester, who didn’t have to hide his disdain. He tried for a sympathetic smile. “Leek’s your boss, right? Working you hard?”  


            The iron flashed back into Lorraine’s eyes. “He’s not my boss,” she said, and left.

 

***

 

            A couple of days later, Stephen returned home. He had been able to wash clothes at the ARC, and thanks to the depredations of his job he had already been keeping several changes in his locker, but he knew that recycling the same four shirts would draw attention soon. Also, the weather had turned, and he needed slightly lighter clothes, and to dump the heavy grey fleece he’d been wearing.

 

            He had hoped that Helen would be out, running one of her mysterious errands, or have left entirely. She seemed to come and go at will, so it hadn’t been unreasonable to think that she might have gone, but when he let himself into his front door and saw her boots and a pair of black patent high heels under the coatrack, he knew it had been a vain hope.

 

            Stephen stared at the heels for a moment and shook his head. He’d seen Helen wear heels exactly twice the entire time he’d known her: she only dressed up when she wanted something from her appearance. He didn’t really want to think about what she might have been trying to achieve in those heels, or indeed where she’d got them from, and how she’d paid for them. He didn’t keep cash in the flat and all his cards were with him, so it couldn’t have been paid for with his money, and he doubted that Lester would have overlooked the possibility that Helen might have financial ties in this country. If they existed, they would have been destroyed by now.

 

            Helen’s things were plainly scattered through the flat – he found foods that he still recognised as her favourites in the half-empty fridge, a woman’s jacket hooked carelessly over an armchair, a piece of technology he didn’t recognise on the kitchen table - but it wasn’t messy. It looked exactly as he remembered, light and pale with fake wood flooring, devoid of personality. He had considered painting the walls when he first moved in, but his landlord had required persuading, and Stephen hadn’t had the time at first. When he’d had the time, after Helen had told her story and Nick had first tried to toss him off the project and then sidelined him entirely, he hadn’t had the inclination. And he’d hoped to move on as soon as possible, anyway.

 

            Stephen could hear the shower running. He shut his eyes for a second, then opened them again and moved deliberately towards the bedroom. This was still his flat with his name on the lease. He was paying the bills, for fuck’s sake! And he was an adult – if Helen tried anything, he could walk away.

 

            A traitorous little voice reminded him that he had thought that before and it hadn’t worked. Helen always took what she wanted from him.    

 

            _So make some different choices now_ , he remembered Lorraine saying. Easier said than done, he thought.

 

            He was at his bedroom door. He pushed it open – shitty, flimsy fake pine, all but hollow under his touch, but the hinges didn’t squeak – and walked in. Helen had not made the bed, and it was in a mess, rumpled and disordered. He stared at it stupidly, trying to work out if two people had slept there, and then noted that nobody else’s things were in the room. If Helen had brought someone else back to sleep in his bed, they were gone now.

 

            Stephen pulled an old camping rucksack from the top of his wardrobe and started to fill it with clothes and shoes. Nobody would question the presence of another rucksack in the ARC, especially given the irregular hours they all kept. Similarly, a spare pair of walking boots and a couple of his books – texts he didn’t recognise were on the bedside table, and when he picked one of them up he discovered it had been published in 2020, but he quelled the spiteful impulse to take it with him and put it back - would go unnoticed. 

 

            He finally met Helen when he left the room to choose some books from his shelves. The shower cut out and she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in one of his largest towels and dripping wet.

 

            “Stephen!” she said, in apparent surprised welcome. Stephen didn’t believe for a second that she hadn’t heard him come in, but he still had to swallow several times before he could get his words out.

 

            “Mind your feet on the floor,” he said flatly. “You’ll find it’s slippery.”

 

            She smiled at him, resettling her towel in a fashion which managed to suggest that – if properly incentivised – she might just drop it. “I didn’t know you were coming home. You’ve been away.”

 

            “I came to pick up a few things.” Stephen tore his eyes from her bare, tanned shoulders, glossy with the water from her shower, and walked over to his bookcase. She followed him, and he stared blindly at the rows of books: scholarly works on palaeontology, popular science on environmentalism and conservation, a few novels and comics, mostly ones Connor had recommended.

 

            “You’re not staying?”

 

            Stephen crouched down to look at some fiction. “No.” He chose a Discworld novel at random.

 

            “Are you sure?” Helen’s hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched violently; Helen hesitated, then took her hand away. “I wouldn’t want you to feel I was chasing you out of your own home.”

 

            He stood. “That’s exactly what you’re doing,” he said, aiming it directly at the four volumes on extinction events in front of his nose. “You’ve wrecked my life, Helen. Don’t pretend you don’t know it.”

 

            “Stephen.” Her hand came to rest on his lower back now, warm and light and so familiar Stephen felt a wrench in his chest, his heart threatening to tear free of ribs and lungs. “I understand.”

 

            It would be so easy to give in. So _easy_.

 

            _Different choices_ , Stephen heard in the back of his mind. _Different choices._

 

            He clutched those words tight, pulled two books from the shelves at random, and turned to Helen. “No. You don’t. You did this on purpose. Stop trying to pretend you didn’t.” He swallowed. “Stop touching me.”

 

            Her hand fell away as devastation spread across her face, and Stephen felt that horrible wrench again, this time accompanied by the desire to apologise, to promise her he didn’t mean it, he’d do whatever she wanted.

 

            “Give me back my keys,” he said instead. “I’m not going to chuck you out right now. Apart from anything else, I don’t want to know where you go next or when you do it. But you have to leave and take your things with you. This is my flat, and you’re not welcome here.”

 

            Helen pushed her wet hair out of her eyes, and now Stephen could see the calculation in among the false sorrow. “This is a change of heart.”  


            “No,” he snapped. “It’s a change of spine. I’m going to pack these things up. I’ll give you fifteen minutes, and then I want my keys back.”

 

            Helen raised her eyebrows. “I hope you don’t mind my changing in the bedroom,” she said sweetly.

 

            “Do what you like,” Stephen said roughly, and stamped back to the bedroom himself to put the books he’d selected into his backpack. She followed him, of course, and behaved with an almost pointed lack of self-consciousness, drying herself off and then dropping her towel to dry her hair, dressing slowly. She was still naked to the waist when Stephen shouldered the bag and walked out without meeting her eyes.

 

            He waited for her in the hallway, leaning against the door and reading another book from the shelf in order to take his mind off things, or at least to look as if he was taking his mind off things. It was a graphic novel Connor had pressed on him, a dog-eared copy of something called _Sandman_ , but it was in several volumes and Stephen had picked up one in the middle of the story. He wasn’t sure he’d ever read the first one, and his memory of Connor giving this one to him was hazy, which meant it had probably been at least six months ago. On a whim, he went back and picked up the rest of the series. There was room in his backpack, and even if he didn’t like it, he could just… give it back to Connor. It looked well-read enough to have been a particular favourite.

 

            Helen came out eventually, dressed practically enough that Stephen thought she might actually be planning to leave, though in a t-shirt which had a very deep v-neck. It allowed him to see a small red blotch on the slope of one breast, and Stephen knew as soon as he laid eyes on it that a second person had slept in his bed last night, and that Helen had wanted him to know.

 

            It hurt, but it helped. He took the keys that Helen dangled before him: his own spares, from a drawer in his desk, which told him both that Helen had searched his flat and that it was likely she had made another set. Helen might have been relying on his inability to stand up to her, but Stephen wasn’t so sure. “Thanks. And the other set, please.”

 

             “What other set?” she said, blinking up at him, her smile curling around the words like she was incredulous.

 

            “You got another set cut. Didn’t you?”

 

            She huffed and rolled her eyes, then drew another set of keys from her jeans pocket and dropped them into his outstretched hand with a jangle. They were on a dinosaur keyring, which Stephen took to be her idea of a joke. “You drive a hard bargain, Stephen. What happens if I get sick?”

 

            “You’ll manage,” Stephen said, disgusted with her and with himself, the way he’d always fallen for her machinations. “Change the sheets before you leave.”

 

            She smiled. “Like any good guest.”

 

            “You’re not a guest,” Stephen said. “You’re a parasite. Goodbye, Helen.”

 

            He slammed the front door shut on her shocked, angry face.


	2. Chapter 2

            Afterwards, Lorraine was never able to remember what had driven her down to the armoury for mid-afternoon weapons practice; she usually preferred to take the time in her (somewhat attenuated) lunch hour, or to get it sorted in the evening. True, she had worked through lunch, supervising the workmen Leek had brought in, and they had been so infuriatingly dense she’d got little more than a headache out of it – Leek was always bad at procurement when it came to people – but still, she seldom took a mid-afternoon break of any kind.

 

            Perhaps it had been the quiet. Everyone else was gone, and Lorraine had felt some kind of instinct crawling up and down her spine, dancing on her central nervous system all morning. She had chalked it up to paranoia and tiredness, since Leek’s tendency to hand work off to her at the slightest provocation was encroaching more and more on her days, and had decided that the simplest way to settle herself would be a change of scene. Half an hour practising on the range offered that change of scene and a chance to tick off an item on her to-do list; she was overdue for some practice.

 

            The walk down to the armoury was very quiet, too. The anomaly team generally provided most of the audible noise and drama, at least on the lower floor Lorraine worked on, and they were all out, including Stephen Hart, who – if Lorraine’s sources were correct, and they generally were – had stopped turning up to work at all in favour of some kind of vigilante campaign. The vast majority of the soldiers were gone as well. Lorraine had heard nothing from her line manager or any of the people who outranked him since early in the morning – Lester was working upstairs, but had specifically asked not to be interrupted, and Lorraine wouldn’t have considered talking to him in any case - but while the lack of communication struck her as suspicious, it wasn’t yet significant enough for her to take meaningful action.

 

            She was just being paranoid, she told herself. Seeing danger in every shadow. Not a survival trait, around here. You needed better judgement than that.

 

            _You weren’t being paranoid when you thought Stephen Hart was living in the building_ , a little piece of her mind talked back. _You were right about that. You should have told someone._

 

            Lorraine’s mouth twisted as she signed out the correct weapon, earmuffs and eye protection, almost on automatic.  Maybe she should have told someone about Stephen Hart’s behaviour – there had to be a reason why he wasn’t going home, and Lorraine would put good money on its having something to do with Helen – but she had no proof of any wrongdoing and no-one she could report it to besides Leek. And Lorraine felt very strongly that whatever Stephen Hart had done, he deserved better than that.

 

            She spent forty-five minutes on the range, trying to quell her unease – fifteen minutes longer than she had meant to, and she’d been away from her desk for almost an hour. She had her phone with her, but still.

 

            She pulled her earmuffs from her ears with a frustrated sigh and let herself out of the range into the main armoury. She signed the weapon and protective gear back in, then straightened her skirt and went to the heavy door that connected the armoury to the corridor. She hadn’t closed it behind her when she heard the first scream.

 

            It took mere seconds for her to hear another, standing frozen and listening hard for any clue as to what was happening, and this time the scream she heard included the word _Help_.

 

            Lorraine ran back into the armoury and pulled out the gun she had just signed out and several clips of ammunition, which she shoved into the pockets of her suit jacket, ripping the stitches that held them closed to protect the jacket’s line. She loaded the gun, scribbled her name on the sign-out sheet, and darted to the door, letting herself out. The screams had come from the direction of the central atrium. Lorraine took one small step towards the atrium, past the gym, and then another. Slow and cautious and quiet. She heard no more screams for a while, and then she heard howling and sounds of battle not far away, and cut quickly through the lab next to her before she could change her mind, which was where she tripped over the first dead body. One of the botanists - medium-height, white and thoroughly average - save for the gaping hole from throat to diaphragm. Lorraine swallowed and scrambled to her feet, wiping the blood on her hand off on her skirt, and kept moving. The sounds of a fight had stopped, and Lorraine felt dread heavy in her ribcage as she edged forward. The lights were flickering, fluorescent flashes across the labs’ counters and microscopes. Lorraine let herself through the glass door into the second lab, and saw in a single snapshot the open door into the corridor she had been aiming for, the sprawled body of a man in black in the doorway, and something grey and malign diving towards her, faster than –

 

            Lorraine’s finger tightened on the trigger, and the creature shrieked, high and eerie, as it was thrown back a few steps. Lorraine fired again, and again as she ran through the lab, glass-fronted cabinets and lights smashing as bullets shattered glass and equipment, largely missing the creature following her, something clicking like dry bones in its throat as it sought her, but buying her precious moments to dash into the corridor, to fire again. She almost tripped on another one of the bodies, there were several here, largely military, and she stumbled and fell heavily against the wall, fired into the open door behind her and drew in a horrified, gasping breath as the hammer clicked emptily. She fumbled for another clip, threw herself onto the floor away from the creature as it tore through the doorway, fired from the floor again, scrambled to her feet without knowing more than that some of her shots had connected, and _ran_. She could hear automatic gunfire in the distance mixed with some kind of pounding music, but it was almost inaudible over the thundering of her own heart, over her ears straining for –

 

            _Click-click-click_ : Lorraine dived behind a photocopier and sprayed the entire corridor liberally with bullets, hoping against hope that everyone was dead or hidden, knowing that if she wanted to live she had no choice but to risk firing. That horrible, high-pitched shriek again, and more clicking, this time almost frantic, as if it was searching for her, and Lorraine caught a glimpse of it balanced spider-like on top of a tall filing cabinet, swaying where it perched and flickering in and out of view as the lights quavered, and poured five or six bullets into its centre mass, then scrambled and ran again, and kept running: the gunfire faded in her ears as she fled to the lowest, dustiest levels of the ARC, the still places no-one ever went because no-one had been hired to fill those offices or that lab.

 

            Finally, she reached a store-room she knew the code for and punched it in with hands that shook, let herself in and pulled the door shut behind her until it clicked, and she flinched from the sound but took comfort from it too. The door was now locked, and no-one else could get in without the code. Especially not the dreadful creature she had seen, a collection of bones and starved ribs and blind black eyes, that curious red machine welded to the top of its distorted skull.

 

            She wondered if she had killed it or only injured it. She thought she knew what she had seen now, recognised it from reports she had read, and knew that the soldiers had struggled to kill it even with fully automatic machine guns: it was just too fast. But that had been in an open area, and they’d had to worry about not hitting their colleagues, whereas she had been trapped alone in a closed corridor with it. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it down as she shuffled her way through the darkness of the room, pushing blindly past boxes and shelving with her free hand, stubbing her toes and barking her shins.

 

            Eventually she found her way to the room’s furthest, darkest corner. Eyes now a little adjusted to the darkness, she set the gun down on the floor and lowered herself unsteadily to sit in the corner, arms wrapped around her knees. She felt cold, sweat soaking her shirt, but she wasn’t, she thought, injured; she couldn’t find anything more serious than a graze when she ran her hands over herself, and nothing hurt much.

 

            Lorraine waited. Her hands shook, clammy with fear and sore from the recoil, and she listened hard for any sounds, the pulse in her throat beating fiercely.

 

            _Please don’t come for me_ , she thought, tears stinging at her eyes. _Please don’t. Please don’t._

 

            She hoped the men she’d fallen over had been dead when she left them.

 

***

 

            “I don’t know what you were fucking thinking, mate,” Ditzy said, shoving Stephen into the back of the car rather less roughly than his tone might have suggested. “But don’t fucking think it again, all right? Sit there and don’t do anything else self-sacrificing.”

 

            Stephen nodded automatically, folding silently into his seat. He felt hollow, and his ears rang from the sound of the ARC’s soldiers battering their way into Leek’s stronghold, his mind wrung out from the rollercoaster of the last few days. Helen had lied to him, of course; he’d come to protect Nick, helpless to cut his ties to another Cutter, and he’d walked straight into a developing bloodbath. It was only luck that Lyle had rounded the corner before Stephen had locked himself into the creatures’ feeding-grounds and not after. Only luck that Abby and Jenny and Connor and that girlfriend of Connor’s – that ex-girlfriend, it turned out, and a honey-trap at that; part of Stephen, somewhere, felt bad for Connor – had come out alive. Abby had spoken to him, which was a small miracle. Connor had hugged him, but Connor had always been friendlier towards him, even after everything Helen had said and Nick had done.

 

            It was Connor who slid into the back seat next to him. “You all right, Stephen?”

 

            Stephen dredged up a smile for him. “I’m fine, Conn.”

 

            Connor nodded as if he believed this. “Chewing gum?”

 

            Stephen blinked at him, unsure if he’d heard correctly – but yes, Connor had just pulled a pack of chewing gum from one of his capacious and irregular pockets, and was offering it to him.

 

            “It’s peppermint,” Connor informed him. He looked mostly serious, and almost rueful. “It’ll make the bad taste in your mouth go away.”

 

            A half-smile tugged and twisted at Stephen’s mouth, quite against his will, and he took a piece of gum. “Thanks.” He chewed for a few minutes in silence, staring blankly out of the window at the industrial estate Leek had built his bunker in, then looked over at Connor. “Is Nick… is he all right?”

 

            “He’s fine,” Connor said around his own gum, and shrugged. “Bit shocked. Like all of us. He wasn’t expecting Helen… well. And Jenny’s really pissed off at him.”

 

            “That’s not unusual.” Stephen closed his eyes and laid his aching head against the cool glass of the window. If he’d been allowed to carry out his mad final plan he’d be dead now and none of this would be his problem. No complications. No more worries about the future, simply because there would have been no more future. It was an appealing prospect.

 

            “No, er… this is unusual.”

 

            Stephen opened his eyes and looked at Connor, who carried on.

 

            “Claudia Brown was real.”

 

            Stephen inhaled his chewing gum and choked, doubling over.

 

            “Oh shit,” Connor said, and leaned over the back seat to pound Stephen on the back.

 

            “I’m fine,” Stephen croaked, after a second, spitting out the chewing gum and dropping it into the cup full of rubbish wedged into a cupholder between the two front seats. “I’m fine, Connor. But what the hell – how? –”

 

            “The timelines changed. Jenny used to be Claudia Brown.” Connor’s brown eyes were very round, and Stephen didn’t doubt for a second that he believed what he was saying. “Helen says Nick did it. In the Permian.”

 

            “Bullshit,” Stephen said, unhesitatingly. “Helen lies, Connor. Trust me on that one. She lies through her sodding teeth every time, if she thinks she can get an advantage out of it.”

 

            Connor nodded uncertainly.

 

            Stephen pointed at him. Helen had got away – at least, she’d escaped for now, and probably wouldn’t be caught until she came back to fuck with their lives again – and if she didn’t know about Connor’s potential yet she would soon. Abby would soon as kick Helen’s teeth out as look at her, and Jenny would never trust a word out of her mouth, but Connor could be very credulous. “Get that through your head, Connor. Never trust a word she says. Promise me.”

 

            “Okay,” Connor said, looking a little taken-aback, and at that moment, Jenny slammed into the front passenger seat, clearly in the mood to end all moods. Stephen didn’t blame her in the slightest. He was pretty sure she’d been shooting inside the menagerie, and suspected that she’d killed at least one person. He knew she could shoot, since standard protocol dictated that most regular staff knew one end of a gun from the other, but Jenny had carried the rifle he’d seen her with as if it was an extension of her arm – not the behaviour of someone who was unused to handling it. He hadn’t seen her practising at work, but maybe she knew someone with a clay pigeon shooting racket or something.

 

            Ditzy climbed into the driver’s seat very quickly, and neither he nor Jenny said anything to Connor or Stephen before they drove away.


	3. Chapter 3

            Lorraine turned off the screen showing her former colleague’s messy demise at the claws of the predators that had cornered him, and swallowed down the bile that rose in her throat as she tried to calm her mind. It was not easy. She was still wearing the bloodstained skirt she had fled the predator in, a constant reminder – along with the scrapes and aches of her repeated falls – that she had escaped a death like Leek’s by millimetres.  There was still blood, and worse, on the floor in some places. Lorraine had seen it when the soldiers who had come looking for her had escorted her back towards the atrium: some wit, or more likely someone too shocked to act normally, had put up CAUTION: WET FLOOR signs. Her office smelled like a butcher’s.

 

            She did not stare at Lester. He had picked her out of the rag-tag group of survivors when she reappeared, perhaps because she was one of the few admin staff left, perhaps because she was the only one who had known where to find the spare first-aid kit. He’d told her that he needed an assistant, and that she should consider this a field promotion.

 

            Lorraine had stared at him then. She couldn’t now. She didn’t want to look at him. She could understand his agreeing with Cutter about not giving in to Leek, but the way he’d watched every second of Leek’s death… Someone who could do that and remain as cool as Lester had was someone who concerned Lorraine.

 

            She sat down at what had been Leek’s desk and applied herself to the casualty list. Nearby, someone on the phone – talking to family, it sounded like - fidgeted with a biro, a nervous tic, pressing the button on its base repeatedly.

 

            _Click-click-click._

 

            Lorraine flinched and accidentally typed a row of nonsense. She opened her mouth to speak, but it was dry, and she closed it again, helpless. She undid her misprint instead, and started again. She had a list of tasks taped to the top corner of her dead colleague’s desktop, and they wouldn’t complete themselves, however much her hands shook.

 

            Hours later, Lester came and stood over her. She sat back in her chair and looked up at him. “I’ll have the list of contractors finished shortly–”

 

            “Finish it tomorrow.” Lester looked weary, purple smudges under his eyes, and there were hard brackets around his mouth. His shirt was creased, his immaculate, untouchable persona crumpled. “Miss Wickes. Go home.”

 

She felt a little guilty; perhaps she’d judged him too harshly over Leek’s death. She glanced down at her desk, and toyed with her pen. “I will. Mr Lester.”

 

“You should feel free to call me James.” Lester hesitated, and then said finally: “After the work you’ve done today…”

 

Lorraine let his half-sentence hang in the air for several long moments. “I will go home as soon as I’ve finished this.” She hesitated herself. “Mr Lester.”

 

            Lester looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded slowly. “Allow me to express my gratitude that _some_ members of my staff intend to maintain standards… Miss Wickes.”

 

            She nodded in return, and shuffled her things to the side, as if preparing to go. She was almost done with her work, anyway. There was only a single person left to add to her list, and the remaining individuals were currently alive.

 

“Well. I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Wickes. Nine o’clock sharp.”

 

That was an hour later than Lorraine had planned to be in, but it was now fairly late at night, and she appreciated the respite. She nodded again, and turned her attention to her screen, typing in the last of the details.

 

 

            Lorraine was almost at her car when she remembered about Stephen and came to a complete halt.

 

            She knew what had happened to him – she knew almost everything that had happened today, with the exception of some of the more personal details; nearly every piece of information Lester received from the men and women on the ground had been filtered through her, or had been transmitted in her presence. She knew he was still alive, and she knew that he had nearly died. She wasn’t surprised by that, any more than she’d been surprised by the fact that he had continued staying at the ARC after her feeble little intervention. He had returned home more often, though a quick review of the security logs established that he still spent most nights at the ARC. And her Tupperware collection had been returned with polite thanks and a box of chocolates.

 

            She didn’t know where he was now, and it occurred to her suddenly that he was the only member of the team whose whereabouts she was ignorant of. Professor Cutter had been taken to Abby and Connor’s flat and was staying there under armed guard, since Abby refused to leave her reptile collection and Lester had taken the view that they should be kept together. Jenny had been offered Lester’s spare room, and had accepted the invitation. Lorraine tried to think where Stephen might have gone, and came up with nothing, except for the bunkroom he had quietly taken over.

 

            She took a deep breath. The ARC now smelled overpoweringly of bleach, the blood wiped away and WET FLOOR signs taken up, but broken glass and spent bullets still crunched and rolled underfoot in odd corners. The building had the tense, painful feel of somewhere that had never expected to be a battlefield, and every time Lorraine turned a corner she found herself scanning her immediate vicinity for the gaunt grey nightmares that had haunted her. Her hands shook, and whenever the lights flickered - despite Maintenance’s best efforts – she shivered too.

 

            Lorraine caught a stiff blood-patch on her skirt between two of her fingers, and rubbed at it, staring without seeing into the middle distance.

 

            He might have gone home, she told herself. He might be asleep on one of the soldiers’ sofas right now; he’d always got along well with them.

 

            He might be alone in a charnel-house.

 

            Lorraine closed her tired eyes briefly, then put her car keys back into her pocket, turned around, and walked back into the ARC, towards the bunk-rooms. At the door of the one Stephen had taken over, she found Lieutenant Owen, arguing with Stephen.

 

            “Miss,” Owen said, nodding to her as she walked up to them. “I thought you’d gone home.”

 

            “I’m going. I just wanted to offer Dr Hart my spare room.” Lorraine made an educated guess. “I understand he may consider that his own home security has been breached.”

 

            Owen gave Stephen a very searching look.

 

            Stephen rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s possible Helen managed to break into my flat,” he said, muffled.

 

            “And you didn’t _say_ anything? Hart!” Owen slapped his own face and groaned.

 

            “I wasn’t sure,” Stephen said defensively. “Things had been moved around, but I haven’t been myself, I could just have – forgotten. And I couldn’t work out how she’d done it, if she’d done it. And – you know what things have been like, I didn’t – who would I have told?”

 

            “You could have told me,” Lorraine observed. _He’s only telling part of the truth_ , she thought, and knew Owen hadn’t picked it up. If Owen hadn’t been so tired, if they weren’t all such a mess… She wondered how much Stephen had really known about Helen’s presence in his flat. Lorraine didn’t believe he would willingly have allowed Helen to stay there; there was a sort of revulsion to him when he talked about her, and a compulsion, too. She had held his secret over him and used it to separate him from people who might have kept him on a more even keel.

 

            She remembered the look in his eyes when she’d taken him food, and thought that Stephen had honestly believed he had nowhere else to go.

 

            “I didn’t know who you _were_.” Stephen sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “I didn’t feel comfortable at home thinking she could get in, and something always came up so I never got the time to change the locks. I kept checking on the place, and nothing’s been moved around lately. If she was there, she knew I’d guessed.”

 

            “Could she have gone there?” Owen demanded. “After the bunker? Is there any chance we could get the bitch?”

 

            “No,” Lorraine said, and met both men’s eyes when they looked at her. “I was aware of Dr Hart’s concerns, so when I had a moment, I called the police to alert them to a suspicious intruder of her description at his address. Your neighbour said they’d seen her around and gave them the spare key to check the flat. She wasn’t there.” Lorraine curled her fingers more tightly around the strap of her handbag. “We haven’t got the manpower for anything more, and if she was there after all, she’ll be long gone.”

 

            There was a stunned silence. Lorraine felt herself beginning to crumble under its weight, and she sighed. “Would you like the spare room or not?”

 

            “You can’t stay here, mate,” Owen said. “It’s a mess. And I don’t want you on your own.”

 

            “I’ll be fine by myself,” Stephen said defensively, and then sighed himself. “That would be great, Lorraine. Thanks. I appreciate it.”  


            Lorraine shrugged silently.

 

            “I’ll just grab my stuff.”

 

 

            In the car, Stephen said: “Are you going to tell him?”

 

            “Tell who what?” Lorraine said, concentrating on the road. She was so tired, and the orange light of the streetlamps left soft splinters on her vision, eyes sore and aching.

 

            “Ditzy. Or Lester.” Stephen swallowed. “That I knew about Helen. In my flat.”  


            “No,” Lorraine said, braking for a traffic light. “You’re going to. And manage the reveal this time so that Helen doesn’t control it. She’s very good at spin.”

 

            Stephen looked startled.

 

            Lorraine bit her tongue on another sigh. “Tell me what happened tomorrow,” she said. “After I’ve slept a bit. There’ll be a way to make it sound less… damaging.”

 

            “I threw her out,” Stephen said quietly, after a pause. “I know it probably wasn’t… kind. She seemed tired and she’d been injured in the recent past. I don’t think life’s exactly a picnic, behind the anomalies. I still didn’t think… I didn’t think she was capable of so much cruelty. I didn’t think she was using the anomalies to hurt people, I thought she was trying to stop them hurting too many people. So I didn’t tell anyone. I thought Lester’s response to knowing she was there would be too heavy-handed.”

 

            “That’s a good start,” Lorraine said, stifling a yawn and rolling down her window slightly. Cool air played through her braids, over her skin, and woke her up a little. “I might add something about the wisdom of not alienating staff so that Helen can’t pick them off like… like…”

 

            “Baby wildebeest?” Stephen supplied.

 

            “I’ll take your word for it.” Lorraine turned off the main road, aiming for the square she lived on. “Although I’d be interested to know why you didn’t think Helen was cruel, after what she did to you.”

 

            Stephen gave a rather bitter laugh. “It takes two to tango.”

 

            “Even when one of them’s a student?” Lorraine braked to avoid a cat, trotting brisk and midnight across the road with something small and unidentifiable in its mouth. “And did she really need to tell her ex-husband about it in a way that was basically designed to ruin your friendship as much as possible?”

 

            “I know what she is now.”

 

            “If you valued yourself slightly more you’d have known months ago.”

 

            Stephen shifted in his seat.

 

            “Anyway,” Lorraine said, trying to fight the heaviness in her limbs as she parked with extreme care. “Lester isn’t going to fire you. That would be stupid of him. You might get an official reprimand of some description, but I’ll see to it that that is strictly private.”  


            Stephen was startled into a laugh. “I thought you were only promoted today.”

 

            Lorraine glanced at the dashboard clock. “Yesterday, technically. And I’m hitting the ground running.”

 

            “Is there anything you can’t do?” Stephen asked.

 

            Lorraine thought of eighteen dead bodies under labcoats and jackets and gym towels, blood and broken glass on the floor. “Yes,” she said, and although it was an unseasonably warm night, she shivered.

 

***

 

            Lorraine’s flat was very pretty, if small. Stephen’s head barely cleared the doorways, and the spare room she’d put him in was narrow. Still, it had been painted pale green to make it feel more spacious, and it had a view into the trees of the square Lorraine lived on, and it was far, far better than Stephen deserved. Helen had never got her sticky little fingers on this place. Watching Lorraine go over the doors and windows methodically as she locked them in, Stephen thought Helen stood very little chance of ever getting in.

 

            He woke with the dawn, exhausted into a couple of hours of deep sleep that didn’t refresh him much.

 

            By the purple shadows under Lorraine’s eyes, she’d slept even less.

 

            He made the coffee. They carried on.

 

***

 

            “Is he your new boyfriend?” Lorraine’s downstairs neighbour asked, meeting her on the stairs and jerking his head unsubtly at the ceiling. “Has he moved in?”  


            “No,” Lorraine said wearily, breaking off in the middle of her phone call to Jenny. “He’s a colleague of mine. His flat was broken into while he was away and the police won’t let him go back until it’s not a crime scene any more.”  


            Mikey pursed his lips and whistled. “Must have been bad. He’s been here – what – a week?”

 

            “Three days,” Lorraine sighed, purposefully not counting that first half a night. “Don’t exaggerate. Please.”

 

            He patted her shoulder surprisingly gently. “Bad day at work?”

 

            “Yes,” Lorraine agreed, and carried on up the stairs. She put her phone back to her ear. “Sorry, Jenny. Nosy neighbour.”  


            Mikey, now half a floor below, snorted good-naturedly and banged his door shut. Lorraine winced.

 

            “It’s really good of you to look after him like this,” Jenny said, unprompted.

 

            “What? My neighbour?”  


            “Stephen,” Jenny said, clearly conveying that she knew Lorraine had known exactly what she’d meant.

 

            Lorraine took a deep, thoughtful breath, and let it out slowly. “He’s a good guest,” she said at last. “Was there anything else you needed, or -?”

 

            “No. No, that’s everything. Have a nice evening, Lorraine.”

 

            “Thanks. You too.” Lorraine ended her phone call and let herself into her flat.

 

            _Gone out for a run_ , said the note on the kitchen table. _ETA 1915._ _Bought milk._

 

            Lorraine set her handbag down and glanced at her watch. Half-past six. She went over to the fridge, and started picking through the rather bare contents of the fridge; she hadn’t been very good about shopping for food over the last few months, pushed halfway to her limits by Oliver Leek’s constant piling tasks onto her, things that were well within his remit.

 

            She knew now why he’d done that, of course. Organising a prehistoric terror zoo must have been time-consuming.

 

            Lorraine put frozen white fish in the washing-up bowl to defrost, flipped to a stained page of a recipe book, and started vindictively chopping onions. By the time Stephen got back, the curry was simmering on the hob, and Lorraine was on her laptop on the kitchen island, absent-mindedly vetting florists for their tasteful funeral wreaths. The ARC, in the person of James Lester, needed to invest in a lot of them.

 

            She glanced up, and blinked stupidly at the sight of Stephen in running shorts and a t-shirt, soaked to the bone and scraping his muddy shoes fruitlessly on the mat.

 

            “I think we’ve had the last of the good weather,” Stephen said ruefully, giving up and leaning over to pull his shoes off.

 

            “It wasn’t exactly seasonal, anyway,” Lorraine said, catching her breath and finding her voice again. “I was about to put the rice on, if you want a shower before dinner.”


	4. Chapter 4

            The flat was well-constructed. The walls were thick enough that Stephen didn’t wake to the sound of Lorraine having a nightmare until the fifth night he stayed there, although she admitted – when he’d rushed into her room and found her sitting up in bed wide-eyed, shaken, and rasping out breaths torn ragged by the scream he’d heard – she’d had them every night since the attack on the ARC.

 

            Stephen went and put the gun he’d been issued for protection away, in order to give them both a bit of time to sort themselves out. He’d slapped the light on when he ran into her bedroom, and in its bright light he’d been able to see her burning with embarrassment that she’d woken him, and then averting her eyes from his chest when she realised he hadn’t bothered with a shirt: she was curiously shy, and though he knew he couldn’t exactly have stopped to dress, he felt embarrassed under her eyes. Suitably dressed, he went and put the kettle on and rummaged through the collection of DVDs under Lorraine’s TV until he found a harmless David Attenborough documentary and put it on. When he’d finished fidgeting with the unfamiliar settings, he turned around to find her making two cups of herbal tea, wrapped in a soft navy blue sweatshirt over her pink pyjama bottoms, looking a shadow of herself.

 

            “You should just wake me,” he said. “If you have bad dreams.”  
  
            Lorraine passed him his tea. She said nothing, and Stephen guessed that she had resolved to hide the dreams as well as she could.

 

            “I don’t sleep well either,” he said.

 

            Lorraine dipped her head in acknowledgement. Stephen set _Blue Planet_ going, and sat down on the sofa; she sat down at the other end, curled into a tight ball with her hands wrapped around her mug and her eyes fixed on the screen.

 

            “Is there someone you could call?” Stephen asked tentatively, as polar bears moved slowly across sea ice. Lorraine had never mentioned a boyfriend or girlfriend, and the few pictures on the deep windows of her flat had never really been discussed. Lorraine had mentioned a niece, mentioned twin brothers, and Stephen had pieced together the outline of a family of four siblings, a brother-in-law, two parents. None of the photographs featured friends or more distant relatives. There was certainly no-one Stephen could identify as a potential partner. And – at least, to his knowledge – Lorraine had not called anyone in particular to let them know she was safe; nor had she rung anyone up to chat while Stephen was around.

 

            “No,” Lorraine said, then hesitated. “I… We broke up a while ago.”

 

            “Idiot,” Stephen said, a sudden rush of defensiveness catching him by surprise. “Him, I mean – not you. Unless – her?”

 

            “No,” Lorraine said, and she was almost smiling, plum lips tip-tilted. “Him.”

 

            By the time the episode ended, her eyelids were heavy, and she had uncurled a little, relaxing the tiniest bit.

 

            Stephen would take that.

 

***

 

“Have you seen my reading glasses?”

 

“You left them by the sink.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

***

 

Lester sat back in his chair with a sigh. “I’m not interested in pointing fingers,” he said, and rubbed his fingers over the bags under his eyes. “I’m not interested in blame. If you ask me, there is one culprit here: Helen Cutter and her manipulations.” He dropped his hands to his desk. “You could have done better, but – it has been pointed out to me that breaking a cycle of manipulation like that is tremendously difficult. And Helen was able to exploit the breach in trust between you and the ARC.”

 

Stephen stared at his feet. Lester dropped his hands to his desk.

 

“It’s possible I have been too… distant.” Lester sounded old and tired; but they all looked old and tired now. Even as the ARC filled with the sound of glaziers replacing panes of glass and electricians mending the wiring, and the smell of bleach wore off, the empty places where people had died or quit broke hearts. “I understand you considered that you could not trust me with the anomalies.” He sighed again. “I promise you there are other options and they are worse.”  


Stephen nodded. He was beginning to think that, too. Lorraine had named a few names for him, and his own quiet research had suggested that Lester, whatever his faults, was an improvement on some of the people they could have been stuck with. He particularly disliked the look of Don Briggs and Christine Johnson.

 

“In future, if you want to raise concerns, write them down and send them to me.” Lester shook his head. “The inestimable Professor Cutter is leader of the team because everyone is prepared to follow his orders, by and large, but that doesn’t mean that I do not accept other team members may have contradictory, well-informed and well-reasoned opinions. I am willing to hear them, Dr Hart.”

 

Stephen nodded again, and then there was a long silence. Stephen stared at his clasped hands, trying to find the words he needed and failing.

 

With some difficulty, Stephen eventually managed to say: “I thought you were the traitor.”  


Lester caught his eye and held it for a long moment. “And I thought it was you.”

 

Stephen caught his breath like he’d been struck, because – it was true, in a sense. In several senses.

 

“Some people might see it that way,” Lester said evenly. “Some people might not recognise the constrained circumstances under which you operated. Some people might consider a form of legal action appropriate. Some people might not appreciate your undoubted talents, or what you bring to the table.”

 

Stephen felt himself flush, heat building up from his shoulders. He knew he was lucky not to be out on his ear – Lester didn’t need to rub his face in it. “Some people might have trusted their employer more if his idea of being a boss wasn’t to appear from on high, say something sarcastic, and leave it in Oliver Leek’s hands.”

 

Stephen cursed himself and his stupid tongue, and opened his mouth to take it back, but Lester had flinched at his words and now he held up a hand. “These perspectives are… necessarily partial. Not, of course, without value. But not, I hope you’ll agree, a full picture.”

 

Stephen nodded.

 

Lester sat back in his chair with a sigh. “So. Are you prepared to continue working at the ARC?”

 

“Yes.”  


“Then your contract remains unchanged. But I would greatly appreciate it if, next time you have dire suspicions about goings-on in this building, you report them to the proper authorities.” Lester’s eyebrows twitched. “While you may have a certain distrust for the usual proper authorities, I take it that you find Miss Wickes perfectly acceptable.”

 

Stephen stared at him, feeling as if this might be some sort of a trick question. “…Yes?”

 

“Good. And our colleagues at the Metropolitan Police have asked that you don’t return to your flat for a while; they think Helen may return there if the manhunt currently on for her gets a little too close, and she will not trust you any longer.”

 

Stephen nodded. “I can – I can manage. I more or less moved out when I thought she might be able to get in.”

 

It was true, he reminded himself. He’d functionally stopped living there long before he’d even thrown Helen out.

 

Lester nodded, though his blue eyes were sharp. “If you were to expense changing your locks, Dr Hart, I daresay that might be arranged. And various members of the military contingent have already suggested that they might take a look at your home security arrangements.”  


“I’ll talk to them,” Stephen said.

 

The intercom on Lester’s desk buzzed. “Excuse me,” Lester said, and as Stephen nodded he leaned forward and pressed the button.

 

Lorraine’s voice rang out, tinny through the speaker. “I have a call from the Minister.”

 

Lester’s eyes executed a perfect parabola, and he pinched the bridge of his nose with some feeling. Stephen felt an unexpected pang of sympathy.

 

“Put him through, Miss Wickes,” Lester said.

 

“Good luck,” Stephen said, and got up to leave.

 

***

 

Stephen was waiting in the car to drive her home. Lorraine had given him permission to use her car when she realised how often they commuted together; sleeping poorly, they often chose to go in so early that no-one really registered the fact that they frequently arrived together, especially as they seldom spoke at work. It was common knowledge that Stephen was using her spare room, but any suggestion of a relationship had been accompanied by quiet, incredulous laughter.

 

Lorraine didn’t blame them, for all they should have known she would overhear. It was a risible idea: Stephen Hart, unfairly beautiful and unfailingly kind, showing an interest in her.

 

She let herself into the unlocked car. “I’m sorry I’m later than I said I’d be.”

 

“It’s fine. You probably got stuck with the paperwork for my screw-up, so it’s my fault.” Stephen started the car.

 

“I haven’t heard it called a screw-up.” Lorraine cast a careful glance at him, noting the clean clothes, the damp dark hair, and the distinct scent of mint shower gel wafting across the car. She recognised it from her own bathroom at home, steamed up in the evenings: Stephen frequently came home from work slightly grubby, and took his showers hotter than Lorraine could quite believe. “Quite the opposite. I mean, I could have done without your trashing somebody else’s quad bike, but I understand it was necessary.”

 

Stephen’s mouth quirked. “It needed doing, or Connor and those kids were going to get flattened, but… well. _I_ could have done without the manure.”

 

Lorraine’s own mouth twitched. “I saw the footage.”

 

Stephen groaned, pulling onto the main road. “Connor promised he’d got it off that girl’s phone!”

 

Lorraine laughed. “Not before sending himself a copy. It was very impressive.”

 

Stephen reddened and shook his head. “It’s just the job.”

 

“You’re good at it. I see no reason why you should shy away from that.” Lorraine shrugged, toying with the buttons of the cardigan in a pile on her lap. “And I’ve seen your range scores. If you insist on having an objective measure of skill.”

 

Stephen smiled. “Thanks.”

 

Lorraine smiled herself, instinctively, and there was a short sunlit silence. She raised her eyes to the road, bit her lip, and added, with careful casualness: “Apparently the girl wants to be a camerawoman when she grows up.”

 

“Er,” Stephen said, casting a suspicious look at her.

 

Lorraine leaned her head back against the headrest and pretended she hadn’t seen it. “She certainly has a, er, an appreciation for flattering angles.”

 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Stephen said, with unalloyed dismay.

 

Lorraine laughed so hard she almost cried. Stephen tried not to, but he couldn’t help grinning.

 

“You looked very nice,” Lorraine assured him, getting her breathing under control again. “I mean, very competent and skilled as well as - handsome.”

 

Stephen braked for a zebra crossing. “You think I’m handsome?” he said.

 

Lorraine almost pulled a button off the cardigan she’d been fidgeting with. “Well,” she said, with false lightness, hoping the blush burning up her chest and shoulders wasn’t too obvious. “I do have eyes, Stephen. So yes.”

 

Much to her surprise, he blushed too.

 

***

 

It seemed to Stephen as if Lorraine had organised every funeral for every member of the ARC who had died in Leek’s attempted coup. He knew that wasn’t the case, of course – the vast majority of those who had died had family who were understandably keen to handle the arrangements – but Lorraine had provided significant support to every family. Partly that stemmed from a certain secrecy Stephen hated, but reluctantly accepted; some of the injuries the victims had received would be difficult to explain away if Lorraine hadn’t smoothed things over. Partly it stemmed from a kindness on both Lorraine’s part and Lester’s, trying to soften the blow and lift some of the practical burdens that fell on the deceased’s friends and family. Lorraine would find them an undertaker and order in the ARC’s wreath; Lester would talk for hours on the phone, write letters of condolence, hold personal meetings.

 

They both attended every single funeral, regardless of whether they’d taken a hand in its organisation or not. Stephen, who also went to every single one – he felt a sense of responsibility for the whole mess that sometimes caught up to him and strangled him, an inchoate sense that if only he’d been stronger or smarter none of these people would have died - was beginning to recognise Lorraine’s funeral outfits. He’d seen them five times already, and by his count there were thirteen more to go.

 

So he was able to say “That’s new,” when Lorraine walked out of her room wearing a short-sleeved black wrap dress he’d never seen before, pinned with a small enamelled brooch at the neckline.

 

“It’s not mine,” Lorraine said. “I borrowed it from my sister.”

 

Stephen blinked, and then remembered that Lorraine had gone to Sunday lunch with her family the day before. He’d gone on an extremely long run while she was out and they’d eaten dinner in front of a re-run of University Challenge. “It looks nice,” he said, because it was true. Stephen didn’t often notice anyone’s clothes, but the dress was undoubtedly extremely flattering, and unlike anything he’d seen Lorraine wear before. It was too racy, which was saying something, considering that it fell below her knees and had been pinned to try to minimise cleavage. Stephen mentally compared the dress to her normal clothes, and wondered if Lorraine had been deliberately wearing unflattering clothes, or if that had been an accident.

 

He probably shouldn’t say anything on a literal level, but he probably couldn’t talk on a figurative one either. Abby had been very judgemental about his orange trousers, but Stephen stood by the idea that it was no good wearing nice trousers to get them covered in blood, mud and shit.

 

“I don’t want to wear anything of mine today,” Lorraine said, her jaw tightening. She had apparently taken his silence as an invitation to explain. “I told Jacinth I needed to borrow a smart dark-coloured dress.” She flushed. “Jac thought I was going on a date. That’s probably why – this dress is too low.” She touched the enamel pin, and – yes, it was quite low. “Er.”

 

Stephen averted his eyes, having caught himself staring at Lorraine’s chest, and there was an awkward moment. He cleared his throat. “Who is it today?”

 

“Oliver Leek.”

 

Stephen stared at her. “I didn’t think…”

 

Lorraine’s tight jaw became almost pugnacious. “I organised it. It seemed right. You don’t have to come. There probably won’t be anyone besides me and Lester there.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m going in five minutes.”

 

“I’ll change,” Stephen said, and went to swap into a suit. It seemed only fair to match the level of effort Lorraine had put in.

 

In church, he noticed that Lorraine was having trouble following the order of service, which was really more of a list of abstract cues on badly-photocopied paper. He nudged her when they needed to stand and sang the single hymn loudly enough that no-one could hear that she had no idea of the tune; Abide With Me was enough of an old favourite that he was surprised she didn’t recognise it, but he was happy enough to cover for her. Maybe there just wasn’t enough room in her mind for hymn lyrics along with everything else that seemed to come under her remit.

 

The priest gave a eulogy. Stephen wasn’t sure why – it was certainly brief and general enough to indicate that the man had never known Oliver Leek – but no matter the reason, the platitudes turned Lorraine’s jaw hard again, and her hands clenched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles went a sort of pale fawn colour.

 

Stephen reached across and put his hand over hers. She didn’t respond for a moment, and then one of her hands curled tightly around his and held on, perfectly-filed oval nails digging into his skin.

 

“I’m not even religious,” Lorraine said, staring out of the windscreen as Stephen drove them both home.

 

“I thought you probably weren’t,” Stephen said. He was an atheist himself, but even he had absorbed the fuzzy basics, learned at school, picked up from the world, taken in over Christmas holidays.

 

“I was brought up humanist,” Lorraine volunteered.

 

That explained why she didn’t know the music and didn’t have the knowledge of a typical service to fill in the gaps. “Why did you organise the funeral, then?”

 

“It seemed right,” Lorraine said again.

 

Stephen absorbed this in silence for a moment, and then said, quite without meaning to: “You’re pretty special, you know? Not many people would do that.”

 

Lorraine was silent as if she was surprised; Stephen was learning the differences between her silences. Then she turned a little red and shrugged, turning her head to stare out of the passenger’s window.

 

Stephen let it go.

 


	5. Chapter 5

This time Lorraine had woken herself from her nightmares without screaming. She was grateful for it; her downstairs neighbour slept deeply and clearly knew nothing about her sleeplessness, because he’d never said anything to her about it. But she woke Stephen whenever she called out, and she preferred not to do that. He slept little enough as it was: the hard lines around his mouth, the shadows under his eyes, and their combined coffee consumption told her that much.

 

She got up and pulled a sweater over her pyjama top. Spring was turning hot, and her top-floor flat pulled in all the heat. She slept under a single sheet in shorts and a sleeveless top, but this late – with the windows open: a small personal victory over her anxieties made possible by the fact that she never opened the street-facing windows – it was cool enough for a sweater to be practical. And she wasn’t risking the embarrassment of Stephen seeing her braless in a thin sleeveless top. It was nigh-on miraculous that, in the three weeks they’d been sharing the flat, she’d managed to avoid him catching her less than fully dressed.

 

            Lorraine padded out into the living room, and turned on a single, softly glowing lamp. She pulled a chequered box from under her coffee table and opened it carefully on her lap, chess pieces spilling out onto the brushed floral cotton of her pyjama shorts. She tipped them all out and set the opened-out board carefully on the table in front of her.

 

            She was just putting the white queen onto the board when she heard the faintest of noises and froze, fear streaming through her veins. A single creak of a floorboard and a footstep -Stephen’s characteristically light tread for such a tall, solid man - told her that Stephen was awake, and she relaxed. She cursed herself for waking him; had she been too loud?

 

            Stephen’s twitch and muttered curse when he opened his door and saw her told her she hadn’t been. He had an empty glass in one hand and no shirt on, and she redirected her gaze to the chessboard, trying not to blush.

 

            He retreated into his room and reappeared with yesterday’s t-shirt thrown on. “You should wake me,” he said.

 

            Lorraine said nothing. She never had any intention of allowing her problems to add to Stephen’s own burdens.

 

            Stephen sighed. “What are you doing?”

 

            “Playing chess against myself.”

 

“I didn’t know you could do that.”  


Lorraine nodded. “Have you ever played?”

 

“No.” Stephen filled his glass at the kitchen sink, and then came over to her and set the glass down on the coffee table, on top of a coaster. “I can’t sleep either. Teach me?”

 

“All right,” Lorraine said.

 

***

 

“Did you ever consider sticking with economics?” Stephen asked, and – in a slightly more prosaic tone – “We’re running low on kitchen towel, aren’t we?”

 

“Yes. And we need washing-up liquid.” Lorraine consulted her list. “No, I never wanted to be an academic.”

 

Stephen reached up and pulled down a six-pack of kitchen towel. Lorraine had walked to the end of the other aisle and taken the shopping trolley with her, so he caught up with her before continuing their conversation. “Why not? You had the marks for it. You certainly have the brains. You can’t tell me you didn’t have _one_ supervisor at Cambridge who would’ve given you a reference.”

 

Lorraine dropped two bottles of washing-up liquid on top of the kitchen towel he’d put into the trolley. “My Director of Studies encouraged me to apply for a Master’s, but I wanted a job. And I got into the Fast Stream, so… What’s next on the list?”

 

Stephen picked up the torn sheet of paper and ran his eye down the column of Lorraine’s immaculate handwriting, everything already selected neatly crossed out. He put out a hand, and Lorraine passed him a biro so he could put a line through _kitchen towel_ and _washing-up liquid_. “Veg. Peas, carrots, lettuce and cucumbers.”

 

Lorraine turned the shopping trolley and pushed it along the top aisle. “Anything from the meat or fish counters? I thought I put down –”

 

“Sausages and white fish.” Stephen crossed out both. “Picked them up. I got pollock, cod is not sustainable.”

 

“I’m amazed they sell pollock in Tesco’s. Can I cook it the same way?”

 

“Pretty much.” Stephen stopped to grab a bottle of sweet chilli sauce from a display, and dropped it into the trolley.

 

“I thought I might go back for a Master’s,” Lorraine said. “Give it two years, and if I missed academia, I could always go back. I needed to save up, anyway.”

 

“What stopped you?” Stephen frowned at one entry on the list. “It just says cheese here. Anything special?”

 

“Pick whatever you like. I’ll eat it.”

 

Stephen nipped into the dairy aisle, and collected a pint of semi-skimmed milk, two pints of full-fat, some goat’s cheese and quite a lot of grated cheddar, all of which he put in the trolley.

 

“After two years I was in a job that didn’t bore me,” Lorraine said when he got back. “I didn’t need to go back to higher education to stay engaged. How you eat the way you do without getting fat is beyond me.”

 

Stephen smiled. That was unusually frank from Lorraine; normally he had to fight his way through a couple of levels of conversational nuance to get close to what she meant. “I don’t live a sedentary life,” he pointed out.

 

“True,” Lorraine conceded. “You’re still technically an academic, aren’t you?”  


“Yes.” Stephen swapped Lorraine the trolley for the list. “What were we looking for? Before we stopped in the dairy aisle?”

 

“Vegetables. You’re a post-doc?”

 

“Ni- Professor Cutter’s post-doc, yeah.” Stephen felt a slight pang; Nick still didn’t really meet his eyes. Of course, the man was on medical leave – Stephen had thumped him pretty hard, and Lester had pounced on the excuse of a concussion to get Nick signed off for exhaustion and send him on an enforced holiday – but Stephen did see him occasionally. His old mentor looked exactly as accusatory as he always had. “Although God knows how long that’ll last.”

 

He glanced sideways and caught Lorraine’s eye by accident: her cool dark eyes were empty of the cloying pity Stephen recoiled from, but there was an acknowledgement of the difficult position he was in, and Stephen felt obscurely comforted by that.

 

“Your name is on the paperwork for all the grants,” Lorraine pointed out, sidestepping an elderly man on a red mobility scooter. “You’re PI for some of them.”

 

“Only because Cutter is no good at supporting Connor in his research. The practical stuff, I mean – he has advice and it’s good advice, but…” Stephen sighed. “You need someone who turns up on schedule.”

 

“So not Cutter,” Lorraine concluded. “He can’t toss you out unless you want to go.”

 

“Sometimes I wonder if I do,” Stephen admitted. “I only stayed in academia after my PhD because of Cutter. I like my subject, I liked CMU, but…”

 

“It’s tarnished for you,” Lorraine observed.

 

Stephen steered around a young family; Lorraine caught a little girl before she could climb out of the family’s trolley and pitch headfirst onto the tiled floor, and returned her to her parents with a quick absent smile for the harassed father now scolding little Ella.

 

“Yeah,” Stephen said. “In a way. I guess.” He couldn’t forget the way Helen had been tacitly allowed to prey on her students, or the grubbiness of some of the backdoor deals he’d seen done. In some ways, his silence had been taken for granted as much as it was at the ARC. And he hadn’t been paid nearly as well.

 

“What would you do if you weren’t an academic?” Lorraine asked, ever practical. She knelt down and picked up a kilo bag of carrots, tucking it in to some of the free space in the shopping trolley.

 

“Conservation,” Stephen said, picking out a couple of cucumbers. “I have some contacts, and I’ve done some work before – Hell. Peas are in the frozen section.”

 

“We can go back.” Lorraine crossed several items off the list. “Why not try working somewhere other than CMU?”

 

Stephen grabbed two packets of baby gem lettuce. “I work at the ARC, though.”

 

“If you stop being happy there, you should stop working there,” Lorraine said, very logically.

 

Stephen stared at her, and ran the hand that didn’t have two packets of lettuce in through his spiky brown hair. “Are you saying I should quit?”

 

Lorraine raised her eyebrows at him. “I’m saying you should work out what you want to do, instead of giving in to inertia.”

 

Stephen blinked at her. “That’s deep for a Wednesday evening shopping trip.”

 

            Lorraine just looked at him. “Frozen peas,” she said.

 

            “My career or our shopping list?”

 

            “Either. Both.” Lorraine glanced at the list. “Also chilli powder.”

 

            “Medium?”

 

            “Hot,” Lorraine said reproachfully.

 

            “You two make a _lovely_ couple,” said a lady easily old enough to be Stephen’s mother, smiling rather soppily at the pair of them.

 

            Stephen choked on thin air, and Lorraine went red and dropped her list.

           

            “I don’t know where she got that from,” Lorraine said feelingly, when they’d escaped to the relative safety of the frozen aisle.

 

            “Maybe she found it wherever the peas are,” Stephen said, hunting about. “Look, I’ll think about my options, okay?”

 

            “Good,” Lorraine said, and then coughed. “I – as your friend, I want you to realise you have options. That’s all.”

 

            _As your friend_ , Stephen thought, and a warm little glow lit in his chest.

 

***

 

            It had taken even Jenny a long time to realise that Stephen hadn’t actually gone back to his own flat, partly because Lorraine and Stephen came in to work at such peculiar hours, and partly because nobody was actually certain when Stephen had stopped living in his own flat, and therefore what to use as a benchmark for normal. And Lorraine was not in the habit of discussing her home life at work. There was usually very little to discuss.

 

            Lorraine also instinctively shied away from the gossip that would ensue if people knew Stephen had now been living in her spare room for a month, had insisted on sharing the rent and utilities, and kept sending her texts like _what kind of coffee do you like? at sainsburys on way back to arc + we’re out_. She had even taken to sharing loads of laundry with him. There was a curious intimacy to her life with him that felt wholly normal when Stephen was eating the leftovers she’d kept for him and talking about the field team’s latest disaster while Lorraine sat at her desk working, that felt comforting and necessary when her nerves were on edge and her mind full of flashing lights and skeletal grey creatures. Stephen would put the television on, or play chess with her very badly, and she’d watch his handsome survivor’s face and feel her pulse slow and her fears ease without conscious effort.

 

            Lorraine didn’t broach the topic of when he was going to leave. She wanted to keep him too much. She scolded herself for that, knowing perfectly well that his quick smirks and warm ease of manner were just the product of a platonic friendship, knowing that the way she was falling into a sort of infatuation with him was both the result of her skewed mental state and a wholly shallow appreciation for his personal beauty. Stephen’s mind might be more of a mess than hers, but she was fairly sure that hadn’t caused him to develop an emotional dependency on her, and she knew, looking in her mirror, that she didn’t have anything to match his stunning good looks.

 

            He’d leave one day, but Lorraine had no interest in hastening it.

 

            She almost forgot that their new normal wasn’t common knowledge around the ARC; another thing she had never asked Stephen was if he had told his colleagues where he was staying. And then Stephen dropped off a scarf she’d left in the car by accident at her office, and Jenny looked very surprised for a moment, and then almost calculating.

 

            “Is he still staying with you?” Jenny asked.

 

            Lorraine considered the potential benefits of lying and discarded the idea. Stephen was a fundamentally honest person whose ability to lie depended solely on turning his face to a perfect blank and letting people think he was stupid, and Jenny had plenty of opportunities to press him on any half-truths. “Yes.” She folded the scarf, soft thin sunset-red cotton printed with navy blue swallows, and tucked it into the top of her handbag with finicky care. She could feel Jenny’s thoughtful stare burning into the side of her head, and successfully fought a blush.

 

            “Is it strange?” Jenny said eventually. “Having him around? I know you prefer your space.”  


            “Stephen’s no trouble. He’s very quiet.”

 

            Jenny said nothing, just watched Lorraine, tapping her biro against her teeth. She’d gone back to the bright lipstick, Lorraine noticed. Weaponised femininity, as if she was trying to pretend she’d never used a real weapon.

 

            “No,” Lorraine clarified. “It isn’t strange.”

 

            “I didn’t think you were friends,” Jenny said.

 

            “We weren’t,” Lorraine said. “But we had some common ground.”

 

            Jenny raised a sceptical, perfectly-groomed eyebrow. “Like what?”

 

            _Guns_ , Lorraine wanted to say. Stephen was the best civilian shot with a rifle, she was getting close to being the best with a handgun, and that was something slightly more than nothing. But it wasn’t why she’d offered him her spare room. It certainly wasn’t why she was so comfortable in his company.

 

            Truth be told, she didn’t know what they had had in common, besides bad taste in members of the opposite sex and a certain dislike for broadcasting their feelings – but she had no intention of advertising that. So Lorraine gave up on telling the truth and chose the answer that would sound most painful.

 

             “We both hate Oliver Leek,” she said.

 

            Jenny let it go.


	6. Chapter 6

Stephen rounded a corner, following the thin, rough tarmac path Lorraine had pointed him to an hour ago, and found her exactly where she had said she would be. He was not surprised. Lorraine was nothing if not completely reliable.

 

She was sitting with her back to an oak tree, bike tangled at her feet, rucksack and helmet strewn around her. She had her nose in a book – a Robin McKinley, she’d told him on their way out of the door, though he had never read any Robin McKinley and had no idea what the book was about – but she looked up as he approached and smiled a smile that didn’t fade when he came to a halt close by and started to stretch.

 

“Good run?” she said.

 

He nodded. “I like this place.”

 

“I used to come here quite a bit,” Lorraine said. “Before work was quite so…” He could see her fish for a diplomatic word, always careful not to give away the real nature of their work, even on a half-empty common on a Saturday morning, nobody about but the odd dogwalker and a couple of young families, and nobody at all in sight. “… Hectic,” Lorraine concluded.

 

He smiled, and ran a hand through his sweat-spiked hair; shifted his weight to his other leg and stretched out his hamstring.

 

“I like it better than I used to like Clapham Common,” Lorraine volunteered. “It’s wilder.”  


Stephen glanced around him. Barnes Common wasn’t hugely wild by his standards, all soft, yellow-edged grass and sprawling trees, a very English sort of unkempt. It was a little too unmannerly for hobbits, he supposed, having re-watched all three Lord of the Rings films with Lorraine in a vain attempt to beat insomnia the previous Thursday. But it was a far cry from the jungles he was used to.

 

On the other hand, most of Clapham Common was next door to a well-kept golfing green, and Barnes Common was still a bigger green space than any of the parks near the flat he would soon have to return to.

 

“Yes,” Stephen said.

 

“Water?” Lorraine said, holding up a sports bottle.

 

“Please,” Stephen said, smiling at her; her smile lit again, although why he didn’t know. She was less solemn than she had been when he had unintentionally moved in, he thought, although it was difficult to judge; when he’d moved in she’d just been the victim of a sort of terrorist attack by proxy. He still had a vague notion that she smiled more than she used to. It suited her.

 

He took the water bottle and drank, grateful for the cool of it on a hot late spring day. Lorraine had gone back to her book; he watched her idly, struck by the sunlight on her cheeks and down-turned dark eyelashes, the steady flicker of her hands as her fingers turned pages, the endleaves settled between her palms. The silence between them felt easy and simple and comforting, and Stephen let himself relax into it.

 

She looked up after a while and caught his eye; she smiled at him like she was a little confused. He returned it, knowing he was confused himself, and capped the water bottle to hand it back to her.

 

“Let’s go home,” she said, taking the bottle back from him and getting to her feet.

 

He lifted her bike back onto its wheels for her, and only realised hours later – when he called to Lorraine that he was putting a wash on, and did she have anything to go in the washer - that when she said _home_ he didn’t think of his spare, pale flat full of Helen’s ghosts, finally cleared by the Metropolitan Police.

He pulled the fitted sheet off the mattress in the narrow green room Lorraine had ceded to him, and wondered rather blankly who would watch documentaries with her when she couldn’t sleep and he was gone.

 

***

 

            Lorraine woke from her nightmare to now-familiar sweaty sheets and racing heart, and felt a profound sense of resignation. She got up quietly and went to refill the water glass she kept beside her bed; maybe if she sat at the kitchen island and sipped at it for a while, her arms cooling on the white worktop, she would feel calm enough to sleep again.

 

            She found Stephen at the coffee table, playing chess against himself. He looked up when she opened her bedroom door, and gave her a tired half-smile. _Here you are and here I am, and we’re still alive._

            Lorraine filled her water glass and took it to the coffee table; sat down opposite Stephen, and set the pieces for a game.

 

            She won at four o’clock in the morning. Her sheets would have aired and dried a little by now, and her pulse felt smoother, her mind calmer. The tight lines around Stephen’s mouth had relaxed a little too, the hunched stiffness of his posture easing.

 

            “I suppose we ought to go back to bed,” she said quietly, the first words either of them had said to each other. “If you’re moving tomorrow.”

 

            “Yeah,” Stephen said. He had a level, easy, pleasant voice, that seemed designed not to take anything too seriously; but there was a quietness and a scratchiness to it now that caught at Lorraine’s ears and told her to listen.

 

            What for? she asked herself, puzzled. What for?

 

            He had got to his feet and stepped round the coffee table, and he was holding a hand out to her. She took it, his larger hand cool and rough against hers, and as he pulled her to her feet she noticed that he was wearing a t-shirt where he had always forgotten to before – and she was not wearing a hoodie over her shirt, as she had always remembered to before.

 

            If his eyes lingered he hid it well. She only saw him watch her face.

 

            “Night,” he said eventually, that half-smile on his face again, and let go of her hand at last.

 

***

 

She'd driven him here, as they'd agreed; his car had been taken by a couple of the soldiers, using nefarious means Stephen didn't care to enquire into and hoped wouldn't interfere with his no-claims bonus, and put into a resident's parking place near his flat. It made no sense to trek halfway across town to find it and bring it to Lorraine's flat, only to drive it back to exactly where it had come from. So they'd packed up Lorraine's immaculately kept little runaround with the few things Stephen had with him, and had driven across to his flat.

 

Stephen had actually been quite surprised to see how much he had with him, the same way he had been surprised to look at the date and realise he had spent a month and a half living in Lorraine's spare room, sharing her life. And she'd just _let him in_. She was such a private person that it shocked him, every time she handed him a little piece of her life, showed him a glimpse of her mind. By the end she'd even given up on planning her showers to make sure they never caught each other outside the bathroom, which - Stephen was completely unaccustomed to body modesty, had spent most of his adult life on field schools where personal boundaries eroded faster than the dig site, and in the last couple of years he seemed to be in communal showers daily, but Lorraine had been so particular about ensuring he never saw her less than fully dressed that every time he caught her in a t-shirt without a bra, or saw her in just a towel, he had to stop himself blushing like a schoolboy. There was a hell of a body under those unflattering clothes; Helen would have killed for rich curves like that, ones that didn't need the enhancement of a push-up bra.

 

Not that Lorraine herself seemed to have any idea of that. She looked taken aback every time he said she looked nice. Compliments on her mind were received with marginally more grace, but Lorraine seemed generally suspicious of anyone who noticed her. Stephen half-dreaded the idea of her finding out that he'd noticed her - had been noticing her for some time. He thought she noticed him back, sometimes. Maybe.

 

There were only enough things packed into the boot for a single trip up to his flat, once Stephen had slung his big rucksack over his shoulders and Lorraine had picked up a Bag for Life of food. There had been things in her fridge that she simply didn't eat in the normal way of things, and a few more that she had insisted on bringing with her usual quiet stubbornness, as if she thought he wouldn't eat otherwise. Stephen was sorry he only had a few things; he could already feel the emptiness of his flat without her in it, and he wished there'd been enough for a second trip, enough for him to have an excuse to spin out her presence in his flat. It was still the void he remembered, and it had the indefinable sense of a place that others had trodden over to it, quite unlike the peace of Lorraine's own flat. Someone else had been here. Not Helen, though. He thought he would have known.

 

Stephen took his bag to his bedroom and Lorraine, unasked, began to unpack the bag of groceries she'd brought. He found a note on his bedside table confirming that the soldiers had been in here, worked over all his home security and scared his neighbours shitless, and had left him with quite a few more precautions than the new set of keys Ditzy had passed Stephen a week ago. Stephen sighed, and crumpled the note in his fist; someone needed to talk to Blade about personal boundaries again. Leaving it on his bedside table was a bit much, for all it confirmed - in careful, crabbed handwriting - that no-one could break into the flat, short of some kind of battering ram or a T-Rex.

 

He went back into the kitchen. Lorraine was opening all the cupboards, a packet of coffee in one hand.

 

"Just put it by the kettle," Stephen said, and she did so, turning to him.

 

"The lads have been over the flat," he said, and held out the note to her, half-flattening it self-consciously.

 

She took it and smoothed it out with those careful fingers, quick eyes flickering over the lines of text. "They did a thorough job," she said eventually, and he nodded as if his eyes hadn't been hanging on her every small motion. "Where did you find this?"

 

"Bedside table," Stephen said wryly, and Lorraine rolled her eyes.

 

"Boundaries," she said feelingly, and he smiled to hear her echo his thoughts as she put the note down carefully next to the telephone.

 

"Yeah," he said.

 

"I should probably go soon," she said.

 

He caught at his breath. "Yeah," he repeated, a little more softly.

 

She looked aside quickly. He took a step towards her, faltering, and then another, more confident. Don't think too hard about it, Stephen, he told himself as she looked up at him; steady, unwavering, a little confused. He touched the soft rounded edge of her cheek and her dark eyes flew wide, her lips slightly parted, but she didn't move away from him, and when he felt her hand on his chest it was to curl her fingers into his shirt, not push him away.

 

"Lorraine," he said, very quietly, and kissed her. She tasted like the pomegranate juice she'd had with lunch and she felt like velvet under his hand, and the soft catch of her breath and the way she moved slightly, instinctively towards him made him feel like fireworks were going off inside his head.

 

He drew back to catch his breath and smiled down at her, helpless, hapless. "Thank you," he said. "For everything you've done for me - Lorraine, without you I'd be dead."

 

Iron shutters slammed down behind her eyes. "You don't need to be grateful," Lorraine said, stepping out of his arms with less grace than finality. "You don't owe me anything."

 

She was gone before he could say anything else.

 

***

 

Lorraine went home and put the kettle on. There were plastic folders full of sheaves of paper on her desk, the kind of tasks that weren't as sensitive or as urgent as most of her work and could therefore be brought home.

 

By the time her coffee was ready she had them organised in priority order and stacked next to her desk chair, a load of laundry spinning in the washing machine. There had been a pair of socks in it, several sizes too big and in a frankly horrible pattern she would never wear anyway. Lorraine had considered just leaving them out, but they wouldn't dye her dark wash and there was no point returning a pair of dirty socks to Stephen.

 

She worked steadily through the rest of the afternoon and the evening, ignoring her phone. Stephen left two voicemails and sent several texts; she deleted them all, unread, unlistened to, except for the first quick snippets of his voice before she could punch in the right number options.

 

 _Lorraine, I_ \- and _Please, Lo-_ rang in her ears for the rest of the day. Lorraine drowned them out with expenses reports.

 

When she woke up in the middle of the night, she played chess against herself; but she lost track halfway through, and came back to herself, stacking the pawns in dreamlike lines with rooks at head and foot. She had just dropped both queens under the coffee table, having twirled them and turned them over her absent palms until she lost her grip and dropped them.

 

She went back to bed and had nightmares again, and still she refused to miss him.

 

***

 

"We don't normally see you in here this early," Blade said, when Stephen walked into the locker room, dropped his rucksack, and pulled his sweaty shirt over his head.

 

There had been a group of the soldiers in there, chatting and changing out of uniform; Stephen had managed to time his arrival for the departure of the night shift, and had seen them filtering out of the locker room as he headed down the corridor. He didn't know why Blade was still in. Probably reassembling the webbing that seemed to sit under his clothes about ninety percent of the time, laden with knives. Stephen occasionally wondered how he avoided getting stopped and searched.

 

Stephen shrugged. "I woke up early. Thought I might as well take advantage."

 

"Did you run here?"

 

Stephen frowned at the trainer he was unlacing; this was a lot of words for Blade. "Yeah. It's been a while since I went on a long run."

 

"Miss Wickes won't have gone with you."

 

Stephen straightened up. "No," he said cautiously.

 

It was Blade's turn to shrug. "You always used to come in together," he said. "But she's not a runner."

 

Stephen floundered towards an explanation for this peculiar behaviour; Blade was beginning to look curiously shifty about his unexpectedly detailed knowledge of Lorraine. "I moved out of her flat," Stephen said. "I got your note, by the way. Did you have to leave it next to my bed?"

 

Blade shrugged, and a smirk caught at the side of his mouth for a fleeting second. "Does she have a boyfriend?"

 

The explanation Stephen had been vaguely guessing at solidified, and he stared at Blade. "No," he said eventually, truthfully. She had walked away from him with the kind of certainty Stephen wished he could emulate and she had resolutely ignored every message he'd sent. Stephen had taken to drinking pomegranate juice and using the same laundry liquid he had got used to at her flat, like the sad bastard he undoubtedly was, but he was almost certainly never going to taste pomegranate on her lips or catch the scent of lavender from her clothes again.

 

"Good," Blade said. It was always difficult to read his expressions, but he was currently radiating self-satisfaction, and Stephen's heart sank.

 

Stephen managed a kind of squashed half-smile as Blade nodded at him and left, and he waited until Blade's footsteps had receded before banging his head hard against the metal door of his locker.

 

***

 

"Your friend moved out," Mikey said, next time Lorraine met him on the stairs.

 

"Yes," Lorraine said, shifting the Tesco bag into her other hand so it didn't cut into her flesh any more than necessary.

 

"Did he get his own flat sorted out?"

 

"Eventually," Lorraine said, although she remembered Stephen's flat as a pale, echoing space with some half-dead plants and very little in the fridge, not somewhere she could imagine him occupying. There should have been an enormous, tasteless music collection and a lot of photographs, and probably bright cotton blankets like the ones Lorraine's sister had brought back from her gap-year travels. Stephen collected odd things. He just never seemed to allow himself to hang onto them.

 

The instant comparison to herself left a bitter taste in Lorraine's mouth. Maybe it showed, because the next question Mikey asked was if she missed him.

 

"Sometimes," Lorraine said. "It can be very quiet, living alone."

 


	7. Chapter 7

The problem with the space that Stephen had painstakingly rebuilt himself in the ARC was that it didn't require him to go anywhere near Lorraine on a day-to-day basis. His office, separate from Cutter's and near to Connor's where Stephen could jump up and rush round with a fire extinguisher if the noises from Connor's den suggested this was necessary, was quite a long way from the central drum. He even had a sounder for the ADD in his office, because the noise didn't clearly reach the room. He had no reason to visit Lester, and very little reason to visit Jenny, since he was better at avoiding PR disaster than Cutter and mostly went on shouts with just himself and Connor. This had several beneficial effects: the anomaly team no longer ran themselves quite as ragged as they had done before, Jenny had half the headaches over PR that she usually did, Cutter spent less time shouting at Stephen, and everything ran that precious bit more smoothly. There was probably slightly less genius, and fewer brilliant solutions to intractable problems, involved - but Stephen had never claimed to be a genius, just that he knew how to get the job done.

 

It had been Lorraine's idea.

 

Stephen stewed quietly in his office, scheming fruitlessly to have a reason to see her - just to check she was all right; not to bother her, just to lay eyes on her once in the course of some kind of normal, reasonable interaction she wouldn't find annoying or unnerving, and be sure that she was okay. She would be fine, of course. She was an adult. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He just remembered nights spent watching long, soporific documentaries, and wondered if she was bothering to do so.

 

In the end Stephen just filed a load of copies of Connor's patent forms and several grant applications in paper form, instead of electronically. Lester had asked to be kept apprised of developments, anyway, and there were several prospective collaborations Stephen and Connor had not yet asked him to sign off on which he should probably be given the chance to vet. Stephen slapped together a few short biographies and paper-clipped them together, with a note that he hadn't checked their security clearance. He knew, at least, what information Lorraine would need for that, and organised the biographies to make sure she got it.

 

Stephen organised the lot into a mass of paper neatly separated by coloured tabs, and took it upstairs to Lorraine's office. She wasn't there. Jenny was, though, eating a salad at her desk with her shoes off under the tale, frowning at her computer screen.

 

Stephen knocked on the open glass door, and pretended not to notice that Jenny jumped. He waved the papers a little vaguely. "Connor's R&D stuff," he said. "I'm supposed to give it to Lorraine. Has she gone for lunch?"

 

Jenny shook her head and swallowed a mouthful of salad. "She only left a moment ago." She glanced at Stephen with those sharp, liquid brown eyes. "I don't think she's gone to eat."

 

"I was about to head out to Pret," Stephen managed to say. "I could grab her a sandwich."

 

Jenny folded her lips, still watching Stephen narrowly. "Just leave Connor's stuff on her desk. She'll probably - oh, there you are."

 

Stephen almost dropped the papers and reversed back into Lorraine at the same time. Eventually, he managed to turn round and hand Lorraine the papers like a normal human being, hoping the whole time that his palms weren't just sweating straight into the paper.

 

"I was only a minute," Lorraine said to Jenny, and flicked quickly through the paperwork Stephen had handed her. "Thank you, Stephen, I'll get this on Lester's desk today if it's urgent."

 

"It isn't," Stephen said quickly. Some of those grants had deadlines a month from now.  "I just - thought I'd get ahead. While it's quiet."

 

Lorraine just nodded, but he thought she approved.

 

"I was just going out to get a sandwich," he added, emboldened. "I can pick one up for you, if you're going to be too busy."

 

Lorraine watched him for a second, and then said: "I'll come with you, if you don't mind."

 

"Course not," Stephen said, as casually as he could manage when he felt so warm all over.

 

***

 

"Just get him to move back in with you and have done with it," Jenny said when Lorraine got back.

 

"It's not like that," Lorraine said, ripping open the cardboard packaging of her sandwich.

 

"Ha," Jenny said disbelievingly.

 

"No. It really isn't." Lorraine opened the bottle of water she carried with her and sipped at it.

 

Jenny said nothing, but watched her.

 

Lorraine shrugged. "It's just nice to talk to him again," she explained, and hated herself for how pathetic she sounded. "I didn't think we were really friends."

 

***

           

Nick had never been much in the habit of knocking on doors before entrance. Stephen, who had had his headphones in while he burned through some kit requisitions, still startled and pushed his chair back. He'd got used to Connor, who tended to telegraph his arrival by falling over something, and Abby and Jenny, who invariably knocked.

 

" _You_ ," Nick barked, one pointed finger trembling with rage about half an inch from Stephen's nose.

 

"Cutter," Stephen said, regarding the finger with justifiable wariness. He pulled the headphones from his ears one at a time and dropped them on his desk; Rodrigo y Gabriela filtered tinnily out into the air. If Nick went for his throat, there was no use giving the man something else to strangle him with.

 

"I know what you're up to," Nick seethed.

 

"Kit requisitions?" Stephen said, glancing at his computer screen. He reached out and pressed Ctrl and S just in case. Nick wasn't beyond a little property damage when he was in a temper like this.

 

"Don't play games with me, Stephen Hart!"

 

Stephen felt his grip on his temper wearing away. "Any bloody idiot could tell you I've never tried to play games with you, Cutter. Have you actually got something you want to talk to me about, or did you just drop in to say hi?"

 

Nick banged his fist on the table, and Stephen heard two sets of nearby footsteps accelerate. He frowned and looked past Nick to the door, still open a crack after Nick had barged through it.

 

It swung open again, and this time Connor was on the other side, swiftly followed by Lorraine.

 

"Professor?" Connor said, sounding heartbroken.

 

Stephen felt his heart twist in his chest, and wasn't sure if it was fellow-feeling for Connor's obvious misery or Lorraine's presence. Their paths coincided roughly once a week, but they still didn't have the ease they'd had when they were sharing Lorraine's flat, the ease Stephen had managed to shatter with a single sentence.

 

"This isn't your concern, lad," Nick said, and he didn't take his eyes off Stephen's face.

 

Stephen knew what he looked like. Immobile, hostile and blank. Nick's least favourite kind of defiance, and Stephen's default expression in the face of aggression.

 

Connor swallowed and drew himself up. "It's my problem. If you're bullying my colleagues. Professor."

 

"I'm not -" Nick roared, almost turning on Connor, and then swallowed his yell with an effort. He spun back round and jabbed his finger in Stephen's face again. "I'm watching you, Stephen Hart."

 

Stephen inhaled at just the right moment and caught it: whisky on the air. He said nothing, but his eyes flickered to Lorraine's sharp ones and she blinked, slowly, meaningfully.

 

Nick went to storm out of the door. Connor scrambled out of his way, but Lorraine didn't move, and Nick - who was generally polite to women, with a sort of clumsy gallantry that simultaneously charmed and enraged Jenny and had never had any effect on Abby - came to an awkward halt, forced to edge round her.

 

"You keep an eye on him, Miss Wickes," Nick told her, half a growl scratching in his throat. "He needs watching."

 

Lorraine merely stared at him, and Stephen felt a grin tug at his mouth. She could have stood in for a statue of offended virtue. Or justice, blindfolded and still seeing everything; a sword in one hand and scales in the other, weighing Nick Cutter and finding him wanting.

 

Nick stormed away. Stephen's iTunes shuffled and started a new song - _if you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends; make it last forever_ \- and he slammed a hand down on the keyboard, muting it before anyone else could notice. Nobody had ever accused the Spice Girls of tact, but that song was a little too on-the-nose.

 

Connor stared at his feet and shuffled them.

 

"What's wrong, Conn?" Stephen asked, and his voice came out as tired as it did kindly.

 

"It's a bit early to be hitting the booze," Connor informed the toes of his new boots - steel toe-capped, bright red, and a wholly practical birthday present from Connor's boyfriend, of whom both Abby and Stephen whole-heartedly approved. "Abby's - Abby's not pleased."

 

Stephen caught Lorraine's eye. He knew little of Abby's history and thought Lorraine knew less, unless Lorraine's less admirable working practices had led her to investigate a bit more than was fair. "She wouldn't be," he said, trying for neutral. Abby would be viscerally revolted, if Cutter was sliding towards alcoholism so obviously.

 

"Abby thinks he's cracked," Connor announced, still addressing his own feet.

 

Lorraine's face strongly suggested that she did not disagree.

 

"If he thinks you're some kind of plotter," Connor concluded, more forcefully, as he advanced to speaking to the lower half of Stephen's desk, "he _is_ cracked. Loony, like. Lost it."

 

"I don't think he's had a mental breakdown, Conn, I think he's just very, very paranoid," Stephen said at last.

 

"He should, like. See someone."

 

"Good luck making him," Stephen remarked, tapping his keyboard to stop his computer going to sleep. "He's never thought much of shrinks."

 

Connor mumbled, and ran a hand through hair that needed a cut.

 

"Try not to worry about it," Lorraine said. Her voice was cool: she was still annoyed, maybe even angry with Nick. Stephen could have told Nick that trying a show of force was the quickest way to her bad books.

 

Besides kissing her and accidentally implying it had only been out of gratitude. Stephen's heart hung heavy and dry in his chest.

 

"Can't help it," Connor said, with that peculiarly endearing hapless half-grin, and Lorraine softened a little.

 

"I know," she said. "Tell Abby if she wants me to speak to HR she just has to let me know."

 

"And if she wants to vent," Stephen added. He gestured with a biro, swinging slightly on his chair. "My door is always open. And I like it better when people don't crash through it."

 

Connor snorted like he got the joke. "Yeah, I will. Thanks. It's been... bothering her."

 

"How long for?" Lorraine asked, beating Stephen to the punch; he shut his mouth.

 

Connor frowned. "She told me about it a couple of weeks ago. Said it had happened once or twice before."

 

Lorraine nodded. "Thank you, Connor."

 

Connor nodded, and glanced at Stephen. "You all right, Stephen?"

 

Stephen smiled at him. "I'm fine," he promised, and Connor smiled, tripped over his own feet, made his excuses and left.

 

Stephen and Lorraine were left staring at each other.

 

"I don't know where the hell he got that from," Stephen said. "Cutter. Not Connor."

 

"I don't know either." Lorraine tapped her fingers on the doorjamb. "And I would like to know, because the last time Professor Cutter thought there was a grand plot about, he was almost right."

 

Stephen dropped his eyes to the surface of his desk, which was cluttered by Lorraine's standards but quite neat by his own.

 

"That wasn't a pointed remark," Lorraine said, sounding vaguely chagrined; he nodded, but didn't lift his eyes.

 

"He could just be drunk," Stephen offered.

 

"That's also true," Lorraine agreed. She sighed. "Well. Tell me if he says anything else. I'll see what I can find out."

 

"If you're on the case it'll be sorted in a week," Stephen joked feebly, but she smiled, and looked down at her feet like she was shy. "Did you need something? You aren't normally down here."

 

"Oh," Lorraine said, and shrugged self-consciously. "I just - do you remember the little cinema near my flat?"

 

He nodded.

 

"They're screening a David Attenborough retrospective next week," she said. "I can't be there, I'm at my sister's, but I thought you'd like to know."

 

"Yeah," he said, and smiled helplessly at her. "That sounds great. Thanks."


	8. Chapter 8

The word _traitor_ daubed across his actual front door was even more startling than Nick crashing through his office door. Stephen came to an abrupt halt, eyeing the uneven capitals in shock; he glanced up and around, slow and wary, and saw nothing. He reached out and touched the red letters, gleaming in the half-light of the corridor. The door wavered under his hand, and his fingertips came away tacky. He sniffed them, and smelled paint.

 

Stephen turned around and summoned the lift, went up two floors, and stuck his head out of a corridor window. Seeing nothing below, he broke the limiter on the window and climbed out onto the fire escape, where he retreated up another floor and sat down, taking out his phone.

 

Lorraine picked up on the second ring.

 

"Lorraine," he said. "It's me. Stephen."

 

"I'm aware," Lorraine said. "I have your number saved in my phone."

 

Stephen slapped his forehead and ploughed on through the embarrassment. "Someone's just painted 'traitor' on my door. Recently. The paint's still wet. And the door's loose."

 

There was a brief pause. "Where are you now?" Lorraine said, calm and controlled.

 

"On the fire escape three floors up."

 

"Don't go back to your flat. Get downstairs and leave by the most circuitous route you can think of. Go to Trafalgar Square. Try to lose anyone following you without looking like you know they're there."

 

"I'm not good in cities," he reminded her, getting up and heading down the rickety metal fire escape. "If this were - I don't know - the Amazon -"

 

She cut him off. "I know. It's fine. I'll send someone."

 

"Should I ring them? I - fuck, I should have called Lyle," Stephen said regretfully, remembering belatedly the actual details of his security arrangements. Various people had gone over them with him repeatedly, but Stephen, who valued his independence and had little faith in anyone's ability to get him out of his own troubles, had never really believed that anyone would come to get him in a real emergency.

 

"It's fine," Lorraine repeated. "Just go. Trafalgar Square, remember."

 

She cut the call, and Stephen put his phone back in his pocket. A couple of minutes later he hit ground level, circled round the back of the building, and let himself out by climbing over the top of the bike sheds he had never used and walking through the quiet back streets of small pebble-dashed houses, aiming for the big main road and a bus towards the centre of town.

 

Lyle engineered a meeting most of the way up Whitehall, by the theatre; Stephen stopped, seeing the other man's hand raised into the air, and came to greet him. Dressed smartly in navy blue suit trousers and a loose collared shirt, sleeves rolled up and matching jacket chucked over his arm, Lyle could have stepped out of any of the government buildings on either side of the road, but Stephen wouldn't care to put bets on the contents of the smart, compact charcoal grey backpack on his back, and his shoes were scuffed. Lyle clapped him on the back, friendly and genial, hazel eyes sharp.

 

"You're late," he said, cheerfully.

 

"Sorry," Stephen said, trying to smile. He'd felt more tense the closer he'd got to Trafalgar Square. "Got caught up."

 

"Is it just you today?" Lyle asked, casually scanning the thinning-out crowd behind him. It was high summer now, tourists everywhere, but the businessmen and women who flooded the place every morning and evening had mostly dissipated.

 

"I'm not expecting anyone." The centre of Stephen's back itched nervously, but he took comfort from the fact that Lyle wasn't scratching his thumbs, a gesture which invariably meant trouble. And besides, it had only been a bit of paint on his front door. Probably the police were now searching his flat and finding fuck-all. Yes, the door had been loose - but whoever had been there had gone in when Stephen was not there. It would have been simple to wait for him on just the other side of the door and attack when he approached. Someone prepared to daub things on the front door in paint where any of Stephen's neighbours could have seen them was not someone interested in subtlety; they could have killed him in the corridor.

 

Stephen wished fervently for a bit of wilderness and something that was trying to kill him for no more dramatic reason than wanting its dinner.

 

Lyle nudged him, and they started walking. Lyle was making idle small talk, his eyes flickering to Stephen and back, across the faces of the people walking towards them, into the reflections on the shop and café windows and the passing buses. Stephen responded as best he could, but he wasn't great at normal polite conversation at the best of times and this wasn't the best of times.

 

They walked up towards Oxford Circus, crossing the road occasionally, ducking behind tourist groups, and finally hopping onto a bus for a couple of slow stops before climbing off near Oxford Circus itself and slipping down two side streets into a busy bar, full of chattering commuters. Lyle ordered drinks, and found them a corner inside.

 

"If you were being followed you lost them before you got to me," he informed Stephen, and chinked his pint glass against Stephen's. "Well done."

 

"Thanks," Stephen said, gulping at his beer, which was blessedly cold. "I don't think I was being followed."

 

Lyle nodded matter-of-factly. "Probably not. Anyone who meant you harm probably counted on you walking through that door."

 

"I wasn't born stupid, Lyle."

 

"Six months ago you would have done it. Stupid or not."

 

Stephen opened his mouth, closed it again, and addressed himself to his beer.

 

Lyle snorted, and they drank in silence for a while.

 

"What's going to happen to my flat?" Stephen said eventually.

 

Lyle shrugged. "Don't know. You're not going back there tonight. If I were you I wouldn't go back there full stop. Someone who doesn't like you much knows where you live and how to get in."

 

Stephen eyeballed him.

 

Lyle shrugged again. "If you're hanging around with Miss Wickes, I reckon you can handle the unvarnished truth. She'll tell you exactly the same thing."

 

She would probably only have implied most of it, Stephen thought, but yes - Lorraine would tell him exactly the same thing as soon as they met.

 

"I wasn't attached to it," he said, and then added for clarification, his eyes darting sideways to Lyle's - "the flat, I mean."

 

Lyle nodded his understanding. "It didn't look like somewhere you spent a load of your time. No offence, mate."

 

"None taken," Stephen said. He saw a familiar figure with black braids step into the bar, and straightened up.

 

Lyle waved, the same way he had when he saw Stephen, and Stephen could see the moment when Lorraine caught sight of them and forged over, slipping unnoticed through the press of people. She was still wearing the work clothes Stephen had seen her in earlier: grey trousers, dark blue blazer, white square-necked top and a small gold necklace. Her shoes had been changed for trainers, though, like she planned to walk home.

 

"Special delivery," Lyle said cheerfully when she reached their corner, tilting his glass towards Stephen. "In one piece, as you see him, and not traumatised."

 

Lorraine gave Lyle a filthy look not visible to anyone else in the bar - not that anyone was paying them any attention, anyway. The music playing covered their conversation, and there was nothing about their appearance to attract interest. Stephen hid his smile in his pint glass. "No trouble, I take it?"

 

"None." Lyle fished his phone from his pocket. "I haven't heard from the lads who went to Stephen's flat."

 

"They didn't find anyone, only some more tasteless graffiti of varying different sorts. Security footage for half a mile round is being reviewed and that will probably get us further." She glanced at Stephen. "Your escape route received a solid nine out of ten, with one mark deducted for not skipping the floor you actually live on."

 

Stephen rolled his eyes. "I'd have fallen off the side and broken my bloody neck."

 

"I believe that was taken in mitigation." Lorraine turned back to Lyle. "Ryan wants you to come back in. He's confident it was Helen who left the graffiti and Lester's raised the security level."

 

"It wasn't Helen's handwriting," Stephen said, startled; but then, he thought, how would he know? He hadn't seen Helen write anything down for years. And paint smeared on a door needn't look much like someone's handwriting.

 

"I know," Lorraine said cryptically. "I'll tell you later."

 

Lyle rolled his eyes and finished his beer. "Do you want me to see the two of you home first?"

 

Lorraine shook her head. "Not unless it will make Stephen feel safer. No-one at the ARC knows where my flat is."

 

Lyle frowned at her. "Miss Wickes."

 

"I keep meaning to change my address on the system," Lorraine said apologetically. Stephen was reasonably confident she was faking it.

 

He drank his beer in order not to laugh.

 

"That's a breach of protocol," Lyle complained. "How would we find you if you were in trouble?"

 

"Why would I be in trouble?" Lorraine countered.

 

"Because you keep associating with this one," Lyle said, jerking his head at Stephen.

 

Both Stephen and Lorraine reddened, and Lorraine let out a short, irritated sigh. She pulled her notebook from her handbag and wrote something down quickly, then tore out the paper and handed it to Lyle. "Here. Happy?"

 

"Slightly." Lyle nodded at them both. "See you later. Safe trip home."

 

"I hope so," Lorraine said ironically.

 

Lyle grinned. "You'll be fine," he said, "my thumbs aren't itching," and left.

 

 

They gave it five minutes, Stephen finishing off the tail end of his beer and Lorraine idly scrolling through her phone, and then left the bar too.

 

"Do you want to stop at Boots?" Lorraine asked. "Or M&S?"

 

"Yeah," Stephen said, suddenly reminded that he currently had only the clothes he stood up in, the mucky things from his work locker that were currently reposing, revolting, at the bottom of his rucksack, and a pair of socks he'd forgotten at Lorraine's when he left. "I didn't bring anything clean away with me."

 

Lorraine turned, and they made their way along the street to the shops.

 

"We aren't being followed, right?" Stephen asked, looking down at her. "Sorry, I'm not cut out for this."

 

Lorraine looked back up at him, and then glanced around them. "No," she said. "But if it bothers you, you can always buy a new shirt and take off your jacket - and you're with me. People are very superficial. If they expect to see someone by themselves, they discount people in a group. If they're looking for someone in a red shirt, they discount someone in blue."

 

Stephen picked at the fabric of his red t-shirt, half-hidden by the light grey jacket he wore to work, for its practical outdoor qualities more than anything else, and grinned self-consciously. They turned into Marks and Spencer's, only open for another fifteen minutes, and Stephen went straight for the boxers and the men's shirts. He had trousers in his spare clothes that only needed washing, and he could probably get away with wearing the jeans he had on now for another few days; they'd been clean. And besides, someone would probably rescue his clothes from his condemned flat eventually.

 

He lost Lorraine for a few minutes and panicked, sheer cold adrenaline running down his spine, but then she found him by the till with a pack of plain black cotton socks in one hand and a jumper draped over her free arm.

 

"All of yours have holes in," she said, dropping the socks into his basket, and held the jumper up against him. It was solid, made of some kind of sturdy wool-polyester hybrid, blue and green and dark turquoise woven into some kind of mixed strand fabric, without any decoration bar the ribbed cuffs and round collar; Stephen rubbed the fabric between finger and thumb and kept his eyes on Lorraine. "And I know it's too hot right now, but this is on sale. And it'll look nice with your eyes."

 

Her own eyes locked with his, and she blushed suddenly, looking away.

 

Stephen checked the label. The price was reasonable, and it was machine-washable. "Yeah," he said. "Nice one." He took it from her and went to pay.

 

On the way out, he ducked behind a rail of women's jeans to swap his red shirt out for a grey one, shoved his jacket into his shopping bag, and tied his new jumper around his waist. Lorraine smiled faintly, dark eyes crinkling with amusement, and he grinned back at her.

           

When his fingers brushed hers on the way to the Tube, she let her fingers wind round his, and catch hold.

 

Stephen didn't even try to suppress his smile.


	9. Chapter 9

Lorraine breathed easier when they were back in her flat. For all she'd been confident that neither she or Stephen had been followed, he had been on edge, and that did not put her at ease. Nor had Stephen's hand wrapped around hers, larger and more calloused and slightly cooler than her own. She had wondered if it were just that he had taken her comments about changing your appearance to lose a tail to heart - whoever was looking for him would be looking for a tall, handsome white man alone, not half of a couple - but he hadn't let go until they'd reached her front door, and he knew that if she had any reason to believe they were being followed she would not have gone home.

 

The flat was as secure as it had been when she left it that morning. She checked every room and tried all the windows, triple-locked the door behind them and went over the rooms for any sign that anything had been moved in her absence, and when she finished she found Stephen in the little green room she still occasionally thought of as his. He was putting sheets on the bed.

 

"Oh." She felt her face warm; she really needed to stop blushing around him. "I forgot I'd stripped the bed. My niece stayed here last weekend."

 

Stephen straightened, and smiled at her rather shyly. "It's not a problem. Can I put the kettle on?"

 

"I'll do it. Tea or coffee?" She took her phone from her trousers pocket and composed a text to Ryan and Lester, letting them both know that she and Stephen were safe.

 

"Tea. Can I have -"

 

"Green?" Lorraine looked up at him, knowing a stupid, shy smile was curving her lips. "I remember."

 

Stephen grinned back at her, and she thought it was some small consolation that he looked as silly as she knew she did. They were both so skittish. It was stupid; they hadn't been like this last time, and they knew each other so much less then.

 

"I'll go and put the kettle on." She stepped out of the doorway, back into the main room of the flat, and thought she wasn't imagining his eyes on her back.

 

Ryan had sent her updates. The police were still wrangling the CCTV surrounding Stephen's flat, painstakingly following the five figures who had entered the building, trashed Stephen's home with red paint and prehistoric creatures, and left mere minutes before he returned home. Ryan thought it had been intended as a message, a warning shot.

 

Lorraine flicked the kettle's switch and brought down two mugs and a box of green tea. She thought it had been meant as a lure. Once upon a time, Stephen would have been desperate to explain himself to Helen.

 

The tea was brewing when Stephen came back in and joined her by the kettle; she pushed a mug towards him and he took it with a nod. Her own was ready. She fished the teabag out with a spoon and put it on the metal edge of the sink.

 

"You're safe here," she said without meaning to, and his blue eyes warmed and softened when they caught hers. There were little sharp worry-lines between his eyebrows, but they were smoothing away.

 

He dropped the teabag into the sink to drain and sipped at his tea. "They're sure it was Helen?"

 

"She left a live ammonite on your kitchen table," Lorraine said. "She did the same to Professor Cutter, at one point. By way of... Of bait, I suppose. We also caught her on CCTV, but the ammonite was the giveaway."

 

Stephen stared at her, shook his head and glanced at his feet, and then looked back at her. "Is the ammonite still alive?"

 

"Yes," she said, and her lips twitched; she knew this would make him smile. "They put it in a bucket and brought it back to the ARC. Abby and Ross are currently engaged in a complex demarcation dispute over who gets to take it home."

 

Stephen did grin at that. "I don't know how long ammonites can live without water, but... She must have either brought it in some kind of tank or carried it in a bag for a short distance. If she brought a tank, that's conspicuous, someone will have seen her. Or she may have dumped it, fingerprints and DNA and all. If she didn't, that narrows down the area she could have come from."

 

Lorraine nodded. "You could try working it out. We'll both be working from here for the next couple of days - until Ryan and his men are sure Helen's no longer around. And there'll be new security to work out, I'm afraid."

 

Stephen looked resigned; Lorraine thought all this had come as a salutary shock to him. Before, he hadn't really understood that anyone would support him in an emergency, or that his skills - so effective in the wild - didn't apply to cities as well as he might have assumed. "Is this connected to Cutter going off on me earlier?"

 

"I don't know," Lorraine said honestly. She sighed, and ran a hand through her braids. They were getting to a point where they needed redoing, but that would probably have to wait. "Maybe. I haven't worked out how yet. Somebody needs to have a full and frank conversation with Professor Cutter in the near future."

 

"Get Lester and Ryan to do it," Stephen suggested. "He respects them."

 

She nodded. It was a good idea; Stephen had always been more astute than most people gave him credit for. "I think that's the plan. He's been packed off to a safe house, anyway, so he can't escape."

 

Stephen's mouth quirked. "Lucky somebody."

 

"I expect he isn't hugely pleased." Turnabout is fair play, though, Lorraine thought, remembering his earlier behaviour. She wasn't hugely pleased with Cutter. He had behaved very badly towards Stephen. She sipped at her green tea and went to the fridge. "It's late," she said. "What do you want for dinner?"

 

***

 

Neither of them slept through the night; when they met in the living room and put on a DVD it was almost like they'd planned it, no words necessary, far too practised at this for all it had been months since the last time they'd spent sleepless midnight hours together. Stephen forgot about the strange constraint between them and sat as close to her on the sofa as he always had done, and Lorraine fell asleep again on Stephen's shoulder in the middle of a segment about snow leopards. He couldn't even drowse knowing she was there; his eyelids would grow heavy, his head loll, and then she'd murmur or shift in her sleep and he would be wide awake again, uneasy electricity twisting in his veins.

 

She didn't wake up when he prised her off the sofa and carried her back to her bedroom, real and solid and heavy in his arms, warm and soft under her loose t-shirt and shorts.

 

Stephen went back to his own bed and forced himself to sleep.

 

***

 

Lorraine woke with that feeling of a dream half-caught between her fingertips. She chased it while she showered and dressed, but couldn't pin it down, so let it go as the coffee brewed.

 

She checked her phone and wrote back a quick agreement to a visit focussed on her security in the flat, and asked for any briefings and those of Stephen's belongings that had been rescued to be brought along. Her inbox was piled high, and she knew Lester's would be even worse; she'd have to clear it remotely today, he couldn't be expected to handle the present crisis and ward off nosy junior ministers.

 

The familiar mantle of a working day settled onto her, and she found it peculiarly comforting. Stephen was heavy-eyed and quiet, but when he set up his laptop on the kitchen island and settled into his own work she thought he relaxed a little. Routine was soothing, and proofreading research papers about dinosaurs and redrafting standard operating procedure for creature management on the field was reassuringly normal compared to having your flat broken into by Helen Cutter - or at least, so Lorraine assumed.

 

Stephen put the kettle on at about ten o'clock, and asked her if she wanted a cup of tea.

 

"Can I have coffee, actually?" Lorraine said, taking her reading glasses off and sitting back in her computer chair. "I didn't sleep very well last night."

 

"No," Stephen said, a little awkwardly. "I know."

 

Lorraine remembered that feeling of the edge of a dream, and panicked quietly. What had she done?

 

"We watched the snow leopard documentary," Stephen said very quickly. "You fell asleep."

 

"Oh." She relaxed a little. It couldn't have been anything awful, then. Stephen was behaving around her much as he always had done, anyway; halfway into her personal space, but treating the remaining half with kid gloves. Quiet and consciously calm, and taking his lead from her. She got up, and had made it all the way over to the cupboards and was reaching up to fetch down some mugs when she spotted the hole in the narrative and froze.

 

"I don't remember waking up on the sofa," she said.

 

Stephen coughed. "I. You didn't. I carried you to bed."

 

Lorraine felt a mortifying blush creep up her body from her ribcage upwards. _No_. Oh, she couldn't have. Stephen... It was bad enough to have been kissed out of pity by a friend, but carried to bed - she was too heavy, and -

 

The kettle boiled. Stephen reached around her and took down two mugs, and Lorraine let her hand fall. She stared at the tiled wall behind the counter, numb with embarrassment, and then eventually picked up her mug and tried quite hard to disappear inside it.

 

"Lorraine, don't," Stephen said miserably, and then the buzzer for the door downstairs went.

 

Lorraine seized on it and her self-control.

 

 

She had not expected James Lester to turn up himself. He seemed to have been worried about both of them, with the result that everyone present behaved awkwardly, including Lyle, who had apparently been set to trail Lester; he was trying not to be obviously curious and failing. Lorraine wondered if his interest was occasioned more by the flat she had kept secret or the fact that she and Stephen were now in the same room. As likely as not, he was waiting for one of them to do something that would confirm or deny a bet placed with him.

 

The meeting was brief and stilted but productive. Lyle had brought a large sports bag of Stephen's clothes and a few other things, mostly books, DVDs and toiletries, apparently chosen at random. Lester had brought paper copies of full reports on the current state of the investigation into the mess in Stephen's flat, and images taken from the footage identifying the culprits. There were several good, clear full-face shots, which revealed that the four men who had accompanied Helen into Stephen's flat were either identical quadruplets or somehow cloned.

 

"They look familiar," Stephen said, leaning over the pictures. "I've seen them somewhere before."

 

"Professor Cutter said the same thing." Lester rubbed a hand over his mouth, staring at the pictures. "Is it possible they were students of hers?"

 

"Not at CMU, I don't think." Stephen seemed certain; Lorraine wondered how.

 

"I recognise him too." Lorraine sifted through the photographs. "I'm not sure where from. But we keep copies of autopsy reports - it might be worth trying those. Or cross-reference names of men involved in anomalies with missing persons databases." She bit her lip. "Of course, there's nothing to say she got the genetic material she used from this time."

 

Lester sighed. "What an uplifting observation."

 

"You aren't paying me to be uplifting, sir," Lorraine retorted. She looked up at Stephen, who was hiding a smirk and not doing a brilliant job of it. Her heart bounced in her chest. "Well, you can stay here. At least until your flat is safe, or until you find a new flat."

 

"Thanks, Lorraine," he said, and Lorraine tried not to overreact to his smile.

 

"I think you're done with that flat, Hart," Lyle said, folding his arms. "The entryway isn't secure at all, and they just broke the door straight down."

 

"Could they do that here?" Lorraine enquired, uncomfortably struck by the mental image.

 

"Your entry's more secure. Tell your neighbours they're not to buzz anyone up for you." Lyle eyed her front door. "You have a decent set-up here. We can see if it can be improved on, if you like."

 

"Yes, thank you," Lorraine said, and glanced at Lester. "I assume we wait to see if Helen and her men will resurface before going back to work."

           

Lester pinched the bridge of his nose. "Give it until Monday, and try not to leave the house. Ryan has said he'll be in touch for further details. Dr Hart, if I could ask you to refrain from telling anyone at work where you are? Mr Temple and Miss Maitland know you are safe."

 

Stephen raised his eyebrows. "And Professor Cutter?"

 

"In light of recent events, I think we should leave him to stew," Lester said, almost biting the words off.

 

Stephen looked slightly surprised. Lorraine assumed that Cutter had managed to give Lester a migraine again.

 

"Perhaps I should call in sick," she said, changing the subject. "People will wonder why I'm not in."

 

Lester nodded. "I was going to suggest you take some of your overdue holiday, but I suppose if you feel a cold coming on the ARC will struggle on regardless."

 

Lorraine raised her eyebrows at him, recognising the reassertion of Lester's sense of humour. "That would have been a very amusing joke, Mr Lester. I'll call in sick and work from home."

 

She gave both Lyle and Lester tea, and unearthed a packet of biscuits that had not had her niece's sticky fingers all over them, but they didn't stay much longer. It felt like minutes until she was ushering them out of her door.

 

Lyle stopped to look at her. "You'll be all right, Miss Wickes."

 

"We'll be fine," Lorraine said, with all the conviction she could muster.

 

He glanced over her shoulder and grinned inexplicably, and then left, catching Lester up on the way down the stairs.

 

Lorraine closed the door and locked it again. "Well," she said, trying to sound normal. "That's that."

 

"Yeah," Stephen said. There was a frozen moment in which anything could have happened but nothing did, and then they went back to work.

 

 

They stopped to cook at around six. It was Stephen's turn, and he was making chilli con carne with what seemed to Lorraine like startling clumsiness, hesitant and slow. He almost cut himself several times, and then finally - having emptied a tin of tomatoes into the pan with violent resolution - he slammed the tin down onto the worktop and said: "Lorraine."

 

She stared at him. "Yes?" Something was burgeoning in her chest, something edgy and restless.

 

"I kissed you."

 

Lorraine looked down at her hands, and the glass of juice in front of her. "I remember. Stephen..." She swallowed. "Stephen, I know Helen made a mess of you, but - you should only kiss people if you _want_ to."

 

"Yeah," he said, suddenly quiet. "Yeah." He moved over to her and touched her hand, very tentatively. "I know."

 

She found some kind of a smile for him, caught in the uncertainty of hope and the sudden feeling of being somewhere she didn't recognise, even in her own kitchen.

 

"I kissed you because I wanted to."

 

Lorraine's jaw dropped.

 

"Can I kiss you again?"

 

Lorraine shut her mouth with difficulty; her jaw felt suddenly stiff, her tongue dry and heavy. When she lifted her hand to touch his face, her fingers shook.

 

"Yes," she whispered, lacking the breath for anything else, and his smile was the brightest, simplest thing she'd ever seen.

 

 

The chilli nearly burned.


End file.
